Ecstatic Forms: Air and the Apsarā during the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945).

This article examines the transformation and significance of the apsara—female Buddhist deities traditionally depicted as celestial dancers—in Chinese and Japanese art and culture during the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945). It traces how the apsara figure was reinterpreted as the "feitian" (Chinese) or "hiten" (Japanese), a modern concept emphasizing flight, movement, and the interrelation of body and space, influenced by new scientific and aesthetic ideas about air and atmosphere circulating internationally in the early twentieth century. Japanese art historian Nagahiro Toshio's wartime research at Buddhist cave sites like Yungang and Longmen helped popularize the term and formalist approach to these figures, while in China, the apsara merged with the popular image of the "Celestial Maiden" from Peking Opera, inspiring modern dance and nationalist cultural projects. The article highlights how these reimaginings of the apsara/feitian/hiten embodied competing imperial and nationalistic agendas, as well as evolving modernist aesthetics centered on air as a medium connecting artwork, performer, and viewer amid the turbulent wartime atmosphere in East Asia.