The Japanese Society for Aesthetics

Aesthetics No.25 (2021): 37-49

Analysis of Aesthetic Experience of the Visually Impaired
Based on Fieldwork*
ITO Asa
Tokyo Institute of Technology, Tokyo

This study aims to (1) analyze the way the body of the visually impaired is represented, (2)assess its significance as an aesthetic study, and (3) evaluate the range of contributions it canmake to the real world. However, this study is not concerned with the representation of the body
but with the living body of the visually impaired. Thus, this study conducted fieldwork with thevisually impaired in addition to the orthodox method of aesthetic literature research 1 . The
fieldwork comprised unstructured interviews by the author with 25 visually impaired people
conducted from 2014 to 2016 (Table 1) and behavioral observations at workshops and otherevents2.
The position of the visually impaired in conventional aesthetics is first clarified in Chapter
1. The visually impaired have been discussed in aesthetics in connection with the sense of touch.
Moreover, the sense of touch has been considered to be a sense of direct knowledge unlike thatof sight. Chapter 2 clarified that the sense of touch of the visually impaired is differently usedfrom the sense of touch that has been assumed by aesthetics based on the fieldwork results.
Chapter 3 shows that touch is not necessarily the dominant cognition method among the visually
impaired based on the fieldwork results. Concerning the debate over the concept of disability indisability studies, the possible perspectives of a somatic approach to disability will be assessedin Chapter 4.
The actual conditions and characteristics of the visually impaired are diverse although theterm visually impaired is generically used in this study. First, differences in the way of seeing(e.g., total blindness, low vision, and partial blindness) exist. Second, variations in visualexperience (e.g., congenital or intermediate blindness) were noted even among the totally blind.
Third, differences in the time of blindness (e.g., whether the blindness occurred in adulthood orat an early age) were noted even among intermediate blindness. Lastly, related differences exist
in living environment and sex. The lives of visually impaired people greatly vary (although all* This paper is based on the Japanese version printed in Bigaku 68, No. 2 (2017): 1-12, published by the JapaneseSociety for Aesthetics.
1
In the field of philosophy, the use of fieldwork as one of the methodologies is becoming accepted. For example,
clinical philosophy, proposed by Kiyokazu Washida, is a philosophical discipline that uses detailed fieldwork in thefield of care as its method.
2
Some of the collected interviews are available in full text on the author's website: http://asaito.com/research/(as of July 2021).
Except for certain interviewees, the full text is available under their real names. This was performed to avoid aone-way relationship between the researcher and the subject of the research and to promote the research as an open
and equal dialogue. However, since the life story of each interviewee is not an issue in this study, the names are usedanonymously according to academic conventions.

ITO Asa38

bodies are diverse in reality, regardless of disability) because of these many factors. Thus, thisstudy aims to generalize the theory of the body to some extent but we should not forget thediversity of the visually impaired.
Table 1: List of interviewees (March 2014–December 2016)
1

SK

Totally blind; lost sight at a young age

Male

30s

Needle store management etc.

2

KM

Totally blind, lost sight in high school

Male

30s

Workshop design etc.

3

NSTotally blind, lost sight at 39 years old

Male

40s

Medicinal herbs, acupuncture store
management, etc.

4HK

Totally blind, lost sight at 13 years old

Male

40s

Associate professor at a museum

5

YS

Weak eyesight beginning 22 years old

Male

50s

Tokyo Metropolitan Government employee
and athletics

6

TM

Totally blind, lost sight in her 20s

Female

40s

Pianist etc.

7

UM

Totally blind, lost sight at 5 years old,
and with no memory of seeing

Male

30s

City official

8

SY

Totally blind, lost sight at a young age

Male

30s

Workshop designer etc.

9KT

Totally blind, lost sight at 7 years old

Male

30s

Blind soccer player

10TA

Weak eyesight beginning 10 years old

Male

30s

Blind soccer player

11

OH

Totally blind, lost sight in his 30s

Male

50s

Acupuncturist

12

AM

Totally blind and deaf beginning 16
years old

Female20s

Essayist, lecturer

13

IT

Weak eyesight beginning 26 years old

Male

30s

Japan National Low Vision Futsal Team

14

SJ

Totally blind, lost sight at 12 years old

Male

50s

Research scientist

15

KEPartially blind since 4 years ago

Female?

Former operating room nurse and elementaryand junior high school teacher

16

HR

Totally blind, lost sight at 19 years old

Female30s

Painting etc.

17

IK

Totally blind, lost sight at 6 years old

Male

40s

Infrastructure engineer

18

OJ

Totally blind, lost sight at 32 years old

Female?

Singer, songwriter etc.

19

YB

Totally blind, lost sight in his 20s

Male

50s

Marathon

20

DR

Female60s

Marathon

21

OH

Male

30s

Blind soccer player

22

KK

Totally blind, lost sight in her 20s
Weak eyesight beginning around 10
years old
Weak eyesight beginning 18 years old

Male

20s

Blind soccer player

23

KK

Totally blind, lost sight at 1 year old
without memory of seeing

Male

20s

Swimmer

24

TC

Totally blind, lost sight at 18 years old

Female30s

Track-and-field events

25

AA

Weak eyesight beginning 14 years old

Female30s

Goal ball

1. The position of the visually impaired in conventional aesthetics
1.1. The visually impaired = the sense of touch
The Molyneux's problem is the first topic that comes to mind when the motif of the visually
impaired appears in Western aesthetic thinking. A born visually impaired person has his sightrestored by an operation. Can he immediately distinguish between a square object and a roundAnalysis of Aesthetic Experience of the Visually Impaired Based on Fieldwork

39

object with his eyes, whereas before he could distinguish between them by touch? This question,raised by Molyneux in a letter and taken up by Locke, became a major controversy involving
almost all the major thinkers of the time with the rise of empiricism as a background.
One of the most representative essays is Denis Diderot’s “Letter on the Blind for the Use of
those who can see” (1749, hereinafter referred to as “Letter on the Blind”). In this letter, Diderot
went to talk to a visually impaired person who lived in Le Puiseau and had studied botany at theRoyal Botanic Gardens and based his argument on what he heard. Diderot did this type offieldwork because the controversy over Molyneux’s problem was based on often unreliable
reports of surgical procedures and experiments that were the latest technology at the time. Certain
researchers, such as Gina Vaughan, see a paradigm shift here in the social position of the visually
impaired. “After Diderot, we have moved from an era of show-style experiments in which thevisually impaired were treated as objects to an era of dialogue in which they are treated as subjects,
as equal interlocutors with philosophers.”3
However, the visually impaired were treated as thoroughly tied to the sense of touch. The
relationship between knowing by seeing and knowing by touching was questioned in Molyneux's
problem. Thus, very little treatment exists on other means of obtaining information that thevisually impaired normally use, in addition to touch (e.g., hearing, smell, or words from others).
Furthermore, Diderot’s emphasis on the sense of touch was intended to cause a value inversion
in the hierarchy of the senses, with sight as the highest, and turns the question of Molyneux's
problem itself into a meaningless one. Diderot asked the man in Le Puiseau if he wanted to beable to see. He replied, “I would rather have longer arms than sight. I’d rather have longer arms
than sight. (...) In the first place, it would be better to improve what we have than to receive anorgan we do not have.”4 This emphasizes the possibility of a form of human perception in which
the absence of sight is the perfect form.
This concept of the connection between the visually impaired and the sense of touch wasinherited without criticism by Rousseau in Emile (1762) and Buffon in Natural History, Vol. 3(1849), who was working on the Molyneux’s problem. This connection affected the living
environment of the visually impaired. The attention paid to the ability of the visually impaired tosense touch paved the way for the use of touch to educate the blind, leading to the establishmentof schools for the blind and the invention of Braille by Louis Braille and others.
The equation visually impaired = sense of touch was accepted as the norm even in the 20th
century. For example, in his Phenomenology of Perception (1945), Merleau-Ponty focused on
the fusion of subject and object that is unique to the sense of touch and being touched and later
developed his ideas about flesh. Here, too, for example, a reference to the visually impaired wasnoted in Part II, Chapter I. As is quite natural, the visually impaired = those who recognize by
touching with their hands is incorporated again into the discussion context.

3
Zina Weygand, Vivre sans voir-les aveugles dans la société française du Moyen Âge au siècle de Louis Braille,
Éditions Créaphis, 2003, p.80 The translations of the texts cited in this study were made by the author (the same as
below).
4
Denis Diderot, Lettre sur les aveugles, édition critique par Robert Niklaus, 3e édition, Librairie Minard, 1970,
p. 9

ITO Asa40

1.2. Sense of touch = direct knowledge
Aesthetically, the visually impaired appear in the context of an oppositional discussion
between sight and touch. The visually impaired have been positioned as skillful users of the senseof touch precisely because they do not have sight. Thus, the sense of touch is expected to play itsrole as a counter to the hierarchy of senses that places sight at the top. The sense of touch was
believed to be a sense that could capture what sight could not.
Derrida reports that this concept of emphasizing the sense of touch, which is supposed to bea low-level sense, is the basis of Western metaphysics. According to Derrida, from Plotinus, who
reduced the good to the sense of touch through Christian theology to phenomenology, this typeof haptocentrism has been continuously inherited. Vision is linked to the virtual and the illusory
while the sense of touch belongs to the side of action and the real and is associated with direct
knowledge. “There is a natural tendency to believe that the sense of touch defies virtualization.
And if touch-centered intuitionism --continuous and serialistic-- is indeed the dominant tradition(...), perhaps philosophy is itself, from its origins, subject to this belief itself”5.
The directness of the sense of touch is emphasized in what Derrida calls haptocentrism,
which is important in this tradition. No room for the virtuality of sight was noted because thesense of touch is a means of cognition that brings one’s body into direct contact with an object.
Thus, it has been considered as the sense that can directly touch the most fundamental self andtruth. This idea of sense of touch = direct knowledge, along with the visually impaired = senseof touch, is a characteristic that should be remembered when understanding the position of thevisually impaired in conventional aesthetics. Thus, what it means to live with a body without
sight will be clarified in line with the experiences of the people concerned by comparing whatthese two equal signs represent and the results of the author’s fieldwork.

2. Sense of touch in the visually impaired
The first thing to consider is the assumption that sense of touch = direct knowledge. It is truethat an object is touched with the hands and perception of the object is gained from the contact
surface. Similarly, visually impaired people have a sense of touch in this sense. However,behavioral observations and interviews reveal that what the visually impaired need to live theirlives as visually impaired people is a different type of sense of touch; more specifically, what
may be called indirect knowledge. Consequently, the characteristics of the sense of touch of thevisually impaired will be clarified from the perspective of sign and absence.
2.1. Symbolism of the sense of touch
Mr. NS, who lost his sight in an accident at 39 years old, made the following statement at
an event held in 20136, “At first, when I lost my sight, I wasn’t used to touching things, and I
thought I couldn’t understand even if I touched them, but as I got used to it, I could understandthe whole thing just by touching it a little. For example, when I touched a guide dog, at first I
5
6

Jacques Derrida, Le toucher, Jean-Luc Nancy, Gallimard, 2000, p. 337“Night of the New Moon” 5th session, held at Dialogue in the Dark, June 9, 2013

Analysis of Aesthetic Experience of the Visually Impaired Based on Fieldwork

41

couldn’t tell where the head was and where the tail was, and thought it was just a lump of hair.
Now, however, I can tell where on the body I am touching, and if it is a person’s shoulder, I canfeel the roundness of the entire shoulder, and even the arms and head connected to the shoulder.
It’s almost like seeing.”
This statement by NS suggests two important things. The first is the existence of what may
be called a sense of touch unique to the visually impaired. The sense of touch is not the same forthe visually impaired as it is for sighted people. The statement that it’s almost like seeing indicatesthat Mr. NS’s sense of touch has come to substitute for the function of sight before the accident.
It indicates that the expected role of the sense of touch is different before and after the accident.
The sense of touch for the sighted is different from the sense of touch for the visually impaired
in terms of its role and the way it processes information. Simply having a sense of touch is notenough to live as a visually impaired person. Furthermore, Mr. N was suddenly blinded in an
accident. Thus, he lost his sight with the body of a sighted person. Through rehabilitation anddaily life training, he was later able to acquire a sense of touch unique to the visually impaired,
which made him feel less inconvenienced. This was simply a shift from the touch of sense of
touching while seeing the object to touching while not seeing the object. This shows that the senseof touch unique to the visually impaired is not inborn but acquired and learned. In the context ofaesthetics, it has often been reported that vision is probably a product of learning—recall, forexample, Hal Foster’s distinction between vision and visionary7—but the sense of touch, too, has
aspects that can be learned.
The second suggestion is the symbolic nature of the visually impaired’s sense of touch.
Initially, Mr. NS’s sense of touch was limited to the surface in contact with the object and only
captured tactile information about it (the way he perceived the guide dog as a clump of hair showsthis). However, by acquiring the sense of touch unique to the visually impaired, Mr. NS’s
cognition has changed to a more conceptual and symbolic one, including the parts that are not in
contact with the object. This indicates that the type of directness traditionally assumed for thesense of touch does not necessarily mean true for the sense of touch unique to the visually
impaired. These differences are attributed to practical necessity. The basic sequence of action insighted people is to obtain a visual perception of what the object is and then reach for it. Therefore,
what is grasped with their hands is information that cannot be visually grasped (e.g., texture,softness, and temperature of the material). However, the visually impaired reach for the object
without understanding what it is. Therefore, identifying the object becomes the first task of thesense of touch.
This symbolic nature of the sense of touch unique to the visually impaired is utilized inBraille as a notation system. In an interview with the author, Mr. KM reported that the ability toread Braille is quite different from the ability to feel the texture of a towel. Braille is “made insuch a way that the height of the raised dots and the distance between the dots are easy to readaccording to the rules,” whereas “towels are not made in such a way that even we cannot feel orcount the individual hairs.” Thus, the act of reading Braille is a symbolic process of checking,which of the possible arrangements of dots known in advance corresponds to the one currently
7

Hal Foster, “Preface,” Vision and Visuality, The MIT Press, 1998, pp. ⅸ-ⅹⅳ

42

ITO Asabeing touched. Moreover, the design is designed to make it easy to understand the pattern of thearrangement. On the other hand, towels have no such placement rules and no design devices tomake them easier to read. The same act of touching something with one’s hands has a completely
different cognitive function.
This is evident when seeing a visually impaired person reading Braille. The hand that reads
the Braille does not stay in one place or repeatedly touch the same spot. According to theindicators given by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology of Japan
in 1995, the speed required for efficient learning of academic subjects is 450 squares/min.
However, 600 squares/min is ideal, which indicates that a considerable speed of 7.5–10 squares/s
is required8 . No room exists for the type of fusion of subject and object that Merleau-Ponty
discussed concerning the sense of touch. The dots must be touched with fingertips, but thesensation of the contact surface is immediately replaced by the recognition of the arrangement
pattern and the meaning of the corresponding letters, while the fingers probably barely detect thetouch of the dots. This is similar to the approach that a sighted person does not perceive the shapeof each letter when reading black ink. Therefore, assuming that the visually impaired have a good
sense of touch just because they can read Braille is too early. What if such a stereotype is imposed
without recognizing the difference between the sense of touch of sighted people and the sense of
touch unique to the visually impaired? This embarrassment is often reported by them.
2.2. Tactile nature of symbols
The sense of touch unique to the visually impaired is different from the sense of touch of thesighted person because they are skilled in symbolic cognition. In this sense, the equation sense of
touch = direct knowledge does not necessarily hold. The connection between touch and symbols
works in the opposite direction. Thus, the sense of touch is probably involved in the understandingof symbols by the visually impaired.
For example, when Mr. KM, who is totally blind, was walking with the author down a slope
in Ookayama, Tokyo, where the author works, he said, “Ookayama is a mountain, and I am going
down the slope.” Thus, what a sighted person would understand as going down a slope, Mr. KM
described as “going down the slope of a mountain.” In concrete terms, "going down the slope ofa mountain" means taking a bird’s-eye and three-dimensional view of the entire land, andimagining that they are going down the surface of the mountain, which is like a bowl turned
upside down. The name of the place, Ookayama, evoked this image for Mr. KM, as the word
yama means mountain combined with the information about the slope of the ground under his
feet to create the above image.
This image interestingly suggests that Mr. KM sees the symbol mountain like a bird's eyeview and three-dimensional topography. For sighted people, mountains tend to be imagined asflat although they know that they are 3D objects in reality as is evident when one thinks of Mt.
Fuji. Thus, visual culture (e.g., painting and image) contributes to this flat understanding.
However, for the visually impaired, especially those who lost their sight at an early age, a8Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, Guide to Braille Learning Instruction, Nihon
Bunkyo Shuppan Co.1995, p. 4

Analysis of Aesthetic Experience of the Visually Impaired Based on Fieldwork

43

mountain is the mountain that they understood by touching a model. Their understanding of thesymbol mountain is supported by the experience gained by their sense of touch. The same can besaid for the moon and the sun. Although they are round like a tray to a sighted person, they arespherical to a visually impaired person.
2.3. Gradation between presence and absence
One more characteristic of the sense of touch unique to the visually impaired, which forces
us to reconsider the understanding that sense of touch = direct knowledge, is its relation toabsence in addition to symbolism. The sense of touch is generally understood to be the sensationof directly touching the physical presence of an object. However, the sense of touch is rather asensation associated with absence for the visually impaired, and the presence and absence areindistinguishable.
At a workshop conducted by the author9, a visually impaired man made commented on the
difficulty of eating seafood bowls. His argument was as follows. “At first glance, seafood bowls
seem to be easy to eat because various ingredients are placed on top of one bowl. In reality,
however, this is not the case. When you think you want tuna, you put squid in your mouth, or
when you think you are eating hamachi, you eat an egg, and you cannot feel the taste. When I eat
sushi, I prefer to order one type of nigiri at a time instead of a bowl of seafood.” This man’sstatement reports the difficulty of anticipation that lies at the base of the actions of the visually
impaired. Vision allows the anticipation of an action (such as the taste of tuna) before actually
doing it. However, in the case of the visually impaired, without olfactory or auditory information,
they come into physical contact with the object without precise anticipation. This indicates thatthe sense of touch for the visually impaired includes more or less unexpected information.
This means that the visually impaired always act on the assumption that their expectations
will be partially violated. They perceive the environment in an approach that incorporates thepossibility of surprises because it is impossible to act as if one is surprised every time theexpectation is wrong. In a dialogue with the author, Mr. NS, who is totally blind, uses the example
of a cup in front of him. As long as there is a cup in front of him and he touches it with his hand,
he knows that it is there. However, its existence becomes uncertain the moment he removes his
hand from the cup. The certainty of the cup's existence will diminish with time. Someone may
pull the cup away without asking or replace it with another cup without realizing it. Exists
becomes probably exists, will probably exist, and may exist. Visually, presence and absence are
two distinguishable states. However, the distinction between the two is blurred and gradated in
the environment that the visually impaired perceive. Although the visually impaired use the senseof touch a lot for cognition, they do not always perceive the object as a solid presence but rather
require a way of cognition in which presence and absence are loosely connected to live as visually
impaired people.

9“Designing a Country without Sight,” held at Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, April 29, May 8 and June 4, 2016

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ITO Asa

3. Importance of cognitive means other than touch
The equation sense of touch = direct knowledge has been clarified to not necessarily holdfor the sense of touch unique to the visually impaired. What follows is a discussion of the equation
visually impaired = sense of touch. Visually impaired people indeed grasp things that sighted
people grasp visually, such as the cup in front of them, by directly touching it with their hands.
In this sense, the use of touch is relatively frequent. However, this does not immediately indicatethat touch is the dominant means of cognition for all visually impaired people. It does notnecessarily mean that the visually impaired are touchers.
3.1. Conformity to the visual world
The first thing to understand is that certain visually impaired people tend to consciously
avoid touch, as Mr. SK said in an interview with the author. “For example, when I walked into
this room, as a child I would walk around and touch everything, and figure out that there was atable and how large the room was. But when you become an adult, it becomes difficult to do that.
You cannot walk around, and people do not want me to touch everything too much. That is not
the custom of people who can see.” Thus, Mr. SK understands that the sense of touch is given anegative value, associated with ideas such as filthiness and danger of destruction in a society
dominated by sighted people. In the process of becoming an adult, they have come to avoid
excessive touching, at least in public.
Similar to Mr. SK, many visually impaired people try to refrain from using their sense of
touch to conform to social norms. The previous section pointed out that one reason for this may
be the development of the sense of touch, which allows them to see the whole picture without
touching everything. This may be one reason why few adult visually impaired people want totouch everything. Thus, treating the visually impaired with a preconceived notion that they havea keen sense of touch may lead to ethical problems. For example, information support is provided
to the visually impaired with the assumption that it is good for them to be able to touch everything.
Thus, the visually impaired, who are trying to live in harmony with social norms, may end up
pushed further into the frame of the disabled10.
In addition to these codes of conduct reasons, another factor that has contributed to thedecline in touch opportunities among the visually impaired is the decline in the Braille literacy
rate. According to a survey conducted by the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare in 2006,
the Braille literacy rate among the visually impaired in Japan is only 12.6%11. In addition to thetechnical hurdle of the difficulty of learning braille only at a young age, the importance of braillein information gathering has declined relatively in recent years bcause of the Internet. Thus,

10
A movement exists to claim the existence of a unique culture of the visually impaired based on the sense of
touch.
See Kojiro Hirose, An Invitation to Touching Culture: An Encouragement of the Study of the Hand as Seen
through the Sense of Touch, Sekai Shiso-sha, 2009.
11
Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, Social Affairs and Welfare Bureau, Planning Division, Department
of Disability Health and Welfare, Results of the 2006 Survey of Children and Persons with Physical Disabilities,
2008, p. 24.

Analysis of Aesthetic Experience of the Visually Impaired Based on Fieldwork

45

obtaining a variety of information phonetically through the Internet without tactilely reading
Braille-translated books and magazines is now possible.
3.2. Emphasis on the sense of touch other than based solely on the palm of the handThus, the preconceived notion that visually impaired people = touchers not only does not fit
the actual situation but may even hurt the dignity of the people concerned. However, note that it
is touch that they are trying to avoid and not the sense of touch itself. When touch is being thoughtof, the act of touching with the hands tended to be in mind. However, in reality, the sense of touch
is distributed throughout the body. The visually impaired make great use of these nonpalm senses
of touch.
For example, Ms. TM says that the first thing she feels when a train is coming when she getson the subway is the wind on her cheek. “The wind is already blowing at the stairs to the station,
so I know the train is coming. When I’m standing on the platform, the breeze comes first, before
the sound. When I think, ‘Oh, it’s coming soon,’ I hear a gurgling sound. After that, there is astrong wind.” A definite wind exists in the case of a moving object (e.g., a train). However, many
visually impaired people use a weak flow of air as a hint for spatial perception if no strong windexists. For example, in a dialogue with the author, Mr. HK said, “I can feel that I am in an elevator
hall or at a crossroad by the change in the air hitting my cheek.” While a sense of touch such asreaching out to touch an object is considered intimidating, a passive sense of touch such as thewind or the flow of air against one’s cheek would not be perceived negatively nor would it benoticed in the first place. Such a sense of touch is greatly utilized by the visually impaired.
Other tactile information transmitted through the soles of the feet is important: some people,
such as Mr. HK, feel the direction of the room from the grain of the tatami, while many others
understand the directions of the streets they pass every day using the slightest step on the road or
the crack in the curb as a landmark. Hence, as Mr. IK says, “On days of heavy snowfall, I havetrouble because there are no more steps under my feet.” No psychological resistance exists toutilize the sense of touch on the soles of the feet because it is not negatively viewed and is notnoticed by people around them. Note that both cheeks and soles are indirect senses of touch. The
cheek perceives the movement of a train or the shape of a crossroad through the medium of air,and the sole perceives the shape of the floor or ground through the sole of a shoe or sock. This is
the same structure as to how vision perceives objects through air and glass. The sense of touch
does not work as direct knowledge in the sense that they perceive objects without physical contact.
3.3 Emphasis on cognitive methods other than touch
Furthermore, the sense of touch cannot be considered the most important sense organ for thevisually impaired even if the sense of touch other than the palm is considered. The importance ofeach sense organ varies greatly from person to person, and using more than one sense organ in
combination is common. Therefore, as an overall trend, information obtained through sound, i.e.,
auditory information, is considered to play a much more important role than information obtained
through touch.
For example, if a voice is heard behind you, you know someone is there. If the sound offlushing on the other side of a wall is heard, you know that a toilet is next door. The sound of a

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ITO Asa

car driving can tell the direction of the road. As Mr. OH said, this driving sound information isvery important when lost in a residential area where little information and few people exist.
Therefore, auditory perception is used as sound source localization. However, more
important and often overlooked is that objects that do not themselves produce sound can beperceived. For example, Mr. IK says that he sometimes audibly perceives fences on the side of
the road. If the fence is wide enough and at the level of ears, he can alternately hear and not hear
the sound of the premises as he walks along the side of the fence. Mr. IK calls this an acoustic
striped pattern. In other words, even if the object itself does not emit sound, such as a fence, anobject can be recognized (or is not) because of its shielding effect against environmental noise.
This is considered to be similar to what is called presence. The environment always has noiselike sounds (e.g., such as the motor noise of electrical appliances, the sound of air conditioning,
and the rustling of leaves). These sounds become the medium for object recognition. Therefore,
Mr. SJ says, “In an anechoic room, I don't feel any presence.” Moreover, cognition using
environmental noise as a medium is not limited to large objects such as walls and fences. Mr. SJ
says that he can feel the presence of a doll the size of a mug when it is placed behind his head.
However, this perception is based on temporal changes in the sound of the environment. If you
standing still next to a fence, the change will not be felt. Similarly, if the doll is present all thetime, it will not be perceived. The movement of the subject or object is a necessary condition andis very different from the sound source localization of hearing or seeing.
In addition to hearing, the sense of smell is an important source of information. The smellof a bakery or a beauty parlor is an important mark for a visually impaired person walking aroundtown. Moreover, the use of sensory organs is not the only way of cognition. For the visually
impaired, verbal information provided by the people around them is an important recognition
method. In addition to the intentional explanatory words of the caregiver, such as “There is tea infront of you,” visually impaired people obtain information from natural conversation. Even
without words, the actions of sighted people, such as crouching, standing still, and observing
closely, can be cues for the visually impaired to recognize the environment.
In this manner, the visually impaired perceive their environment and live in society throughsenses other than sight and communication with others. The visually impaired do not exist as
normal people minus their sense of sight. Conversely, the way they use their sense of touch iscompletely different from that of normal people. In constructing a theory of the body of thevisually impaired, taking a holistic view of the visually impaired as existence without sight as thenorm rather than regarding them as existence lacking sight based on the normal person isnecessary.

4. From the study of representations of the disabled to the theory of the body
By actually observing the behavior of the visually impaired and conducting interviews withthem, numerous pieces of evidence can be reported that show how the equations sense of touch= direct knowledge and visually impaired = sense of touch, which have been assumed inaesthetics, are far from reality. A major reason for this divergence is that conventional aesthetics
has treated the visually impaired only in the context of specific discussions and has understoodAnalysis of Aesthetic Experience of the Visually Impaired Based on Fieldwork

47

them ideologically. Of course, other aesthetic contexts exist in which the visually impaired aretreated, in addition to Molyneux’s problem dealt with in Chapter 1. For example, in the context
of the value debate over ugliness and abjection, the representation of the disabled in general,
including the visually impaired, is questioned. Some studies such as the work of Tobin Shivers,
have achieved success in the field of disability studies 12 . As will be discussed later, its
significance should be appreciated.
In any case, the representation of the visually impaired or the disabled in general is an issue
and the actual bodies of the disabled tend to be left out. If only people with disabilities depicted
in paintings or appearing in pop culture are the subject of analysis, such analysis itself may
contribute to a disassociation from the real bodies of people with disabilities. If it is possible tostudy the body of the disabled rather than the representation of the disabled, what significancewould this have in the real world? In this chapeter, separately from the context of aesthetics, whilereferring to the debate on disability, this study will discuss the range of theories of the disabled
body based on the experiences of the people concerned.
4.1. Two concepts of disability
The first thing to remember is the historical evolution of the concept of disability. The
concept of disability has been debated in various ways by people with disabilities, their families,
and researchers. Some of these debates have taken the form of social movements that have had asignificant impact on the welfare policies of national and local governments. In particular, themovement for the disabled that spread from the UK to other countries around 1980 is often
mentioned as a turning point13.
Disability had been exclusively understood in terms of the individual model until then. The
individual model ascribes the disadvantages and difficulties suffered by people with disabilities
to their physical, intellectual, and mental dysfunction. Thus, disadvantages are directly caused by
the inability to move one's arms and legs and the inability to see. Disabilities are considered to be
inherent in the individual. As long as this model is followed, no other way exists to deal withthese dysfunctions than to treat them. Thus, the individual model is called the medical model.
However, the social model advocated by the disability movement places the cause of
disability on the side of society. Michael Oliver, a leading proponent of this model, defines it asfollows. “The ‘social model’ locates the problem of disability (...) broadly within society. It is not
any type of personal constraint that causes the problem, but society's failure to provide adequate
services and adequate guarantees that consider the requirements of people with disabilities insocial arrangements”14. From the standpoint of this social model, the way to deal with the problem
is not to medically intervene in the bodies of people with disabilities but to eliminate social
barriers. This way of thinking was practically developed as a social movement and had certain
effectiveness as a social change. The current legal definition of disability in Japan is based on this12

Tobin Siebers, Disability Aesthetics, The University of Michigan Press, 2010
For the following concepts of disability, see Ryoji Hoshika, What is Disability: Toward a Social Theory of
Disability, Seikatsu Shoin, 2007.
14
Michael Oliver, Understanding Disability: From Theory to Practice, Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1996, p.32.
13

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social model which has given rise to a new field of study called disability studies in the academic
world. The aforementioned critical research on the representation of disability in aesthetics
contributes to disability improvement as a social model.
4.2. The scope of the theory of the disabled body
However, problems that cannot be solved still exist even if disability is viewed as a social
problem. For example, Shinichiro Kumagaya mentions the problems of aging and pain15. Agingand pain are actual events that occur in the bodies of individuals. These are problems that do notdisappear even if disability is viewed within a social model. To begin with, people who are
considered disabled and able-bodied will have completely different experiences, even if they are
guaranteed the freedom to perform the same actions. For example, going to the library from thetrain station is a completely different experience from going there by sight or with a white cane.
A great possibility exists that erroneous welfare policies may be adopted because thesedifferences, rooted in the physical conditions of the individual, are not understood.
While the social model of disability is important, complementing it with a perspective thatapproaches the body itself and the experiences of people with disabilities is essential. This iswhere the theory of the disabled body can contribute. Research fields such as medicine exist that
focus on the bodies of people with disabilities such as medicine and physiology. However, they
deal with organs and functions rather than the experiences of the body, and with parts rather than
the whole, and are not holistic approaches that allow healthy people to take the perspective of thedisabled. Moreover, a tendency is noted in welfare studies to directly connect with policy, whichindicates that quantitative research using quantifiable data is common. However, qualitative
research that approaches the experiences of people with disabilities is difficult to realize.
What should be recalled here is Diderot’s gaze toward the visually impaired. The “Letter on
the Blind” is not only a theory of the senses but also a theory of human intelligence. What Diderot
was trying to understand was not the lack of sight but the way of perceiving the world without
sight. Kantaro Ohashi summarizes Diderot’s view of people with disabilities as follows. “If wedefine a certain kind of sensory unity as ‘human,’ then ‘the blind’ are not merely ‘people fromwhom sight has been removed.’ The difference between the sighted and the blind is reduced to aqualitative difference in organic unity. From this comes the image of the blind not as beings
deprived of sight, or as lacking sight, but as others who embody a different perfection”16. Should
not such a holistic gaze be directed at the bodies of the disabled without being bound to aparticular context? This is where a possibility and a demand for writing about the theory of bodies
of disabled people exist based on their experiences from the standpoint of aesthetics17.

15

Shin’ichiro Kumagaya et al., “Philosophy of Pain” for Not Suffering Alone, Seidosha, 2013.
Kantaro Ohashi, Diderot’s Materialism, Hosei University Press, 2011, p. 89
17
In the case of mental disabilities, Tojisha-Kenkyu exists in which the people themselves analyze their own
experiences in recent years. However, the practice is still limited for physical disabilities.
16

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Future tasks
This study discussed the possibility of a somatic theory of disability, taking up the specificdisability of visual impairment. However, whether or not a similar approach is possible for otherdisabilities is an issue for future study. Moreover, writing a theory of the body about a specificbody means leaving the generality that aesthetics has maintained when discussing the body. The
question of how to construct a theory of the body that can be established as a science while staying
close to the diversity of the real body and how to construct a theoretical framework thatguarantees this are future tasks.