  In his conclusion, Kuki asks whether various nineteenth-century and contemporary European arts might exemplify iki and decides probably not exactly, though he allows that various aspects of Baudelaire’s poetry and aesthetics come very close (with the difference that dandyism is a male prerogative whereas iki is associated with both sexes). During his seven years in Germany and France he listened to lectures and seminars by, and conversed with, such figures as Heinrich Rickert, Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, Henri Bergson, and Jean-Paul Sartre. Kuki thereby developed a sophisticated understanding of European philosophy and aesthetics, and was concerned after his return to Japan to apply methods he had learned to a Japanese aesthetic phenomenon. He didn’t therefore aspire to any kind of universal aesthetics—since iki is rooted in the culture of a particular ethnic group. Yet because the Japanese at that time, under geopolitical pressure to modernise more efficiently, were losing touch with their own traditions, Kuki took it as one of his tasks to celebrate the aesthetic values of the past (Nara, 58–60).