Codruța Sîntionean, Imaginarul cultural al oglinzii în Asia de Est [The Cultural Imaginary of the Mirror in East Asia], București: Pro Universitaria, 2025, 290 p.

Abstract

In Romania, the growing interest in East Asian cultures over the past few decades has become apparent not only in the increasing popularity of a wide variety of cultural products and consumer goods, ranging from literature and auteur cinema to donghua, manga, C-dramas, K-dramas and K-pop, cosmetics or cuisine, but also in the integration of extracurricular activities and language courses into the Romanian pre-university education system, as well as in the establishment of language and literature degree programs at several Romanian universities. Within this context, Codruța Sîntionean’s Imaginarul cultural al oglinzii în Asia de Est [The Cultural Imaginary of the Mirror in East Asia], recently published by Pro Universitaria, is a most welcome addition to the Romanian cultural and academic landscape. It stands alongside other recently published volumes that, I believe, have the potential to appeal to a readership extending beyond academic circles, such as Rodica Frențiu’s Caligrafia japoneză în memoria clipei [Japanese Calligraphy in the Memory of the Moment] (Presa Universitară Clujeană, 2021), Florina Ilis’s Introducere în istoria literaturii japoneze de la începuturi până în epoca modernă [Introduction to the History of Japanese Literature from the Beginnings to the Modern Period] (Presa Universitară Clujeană, 2020), You-Suk Won’s Politețea în română, coreeană și japoneză. Aspecte lingvistice și pragmatice [Politeness in Romanian, Korean, and Japanese. Linguistic and Pragmatic Aspects ] (Pro Universitaria, 2021).

                Codruța Sîntionean’s book discusses the cultural imaginary surrounding the mirror in China, Japan, and Korea. The introductory section makes clear the contribution of the volume to the existing scholarship about the cultural meanings of the mirror and the conceptualizations of the act of reflection in relation to the history of collective mentalities. As pointed out by the author, this field of scholarly inquiry has tended to privilege the study of Western cultures (20). Consequently, Sîntionean’s research contributes to redressing the existing imbalance in scholarship on the symbolism of the mirror in Eastern and Western cultural spaces. The work intends to recalibrate East-West cultural relations by challenging the hierarchies of cultural dominance and subalternity and by explicitly deconstructing certain stereotypes in the Western perception of the East, rooted in what Edward Said termed, several decades ago, “Orientalism,” a critical concept used to describe the West’s reductive and derogatory representations of the East (16-17). To accomplish this aim, the volume advocates for an integrative approach in the humanities and takes advantage of the methodological benefits offered by comparative literature, following the directions proposed by René Etiemble and Vasile Voia (21-22).