The pomegranate by kawabata yasunari analysis

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The Oxford Handbook of World Philosophy William Edelglass and Jay L. Garfield

Print publication date: Sep 2011 Print ISBN-13: 9780195328998 Published to Oxford Handbooks Online: Sep-11 Subject: Philosophy, Non-Western Philosophy DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780195328998.001.0001

Japanese Aesthetics and Philosophy of Art

Mara Miller

DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780195328998.003.0028

Abstract and Keywords

Unlike most Western aesthetics, which recognize (aesthetic) pleasure, independent of other values (truth and falsity, good and evil), as the primary value of aesthetic experience, the various Japanese aesthetics recognize a range of objectives and effects that is more complex. First, there is a wider range of types of aesthetic pleasure. Those best known and most influential in the West include aware/mononoaware (an awareness of the poignance of things, connected to a Buddhist sense of transience and to passing beauty); yūgen (deep or mysterious and powerful beauty, especially in Noh theater); wabi (powerlessness, loneliness, shabbiness, wretchedness); sabi (the beauty accompanying loneliness, solitude, quiet); and shibui (an ascetic quality or astringency, literally the sensation afforded by a pomegranate, which also imparts a rich but sober color to wood stains, etc.). Second, Japanese aesthetic experiences and activities are employed in the service of a wider range of objectives. These include (aesthetic) pleasure and the revelation of truth; self-cultivation that is not only artistic but also physical, social, emotional, psychological, and spiritual; the construction of personal, group, and national identity; and the formulation of relationships. This article begins with an overview of the uniqueness of Japanese aesthetics. It then examines several of the unique objectives of Japanese aesthetics in further detail.

Japanese philosophy, Japanese aesthetics, aesthetic pleasure, aware, truth

Japanese aesthetics have exerted broad, deep, and important influences on arts, on politics and power structures, and on individual lives not only in

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Japan but, for the past hundred and fifty years, in Europe and America. As defined by modern Western philosophy, the definitive feature of aesthetics is the production and experience of distinctive forms of pleasure, specifically experiences of beauty, the sublime, and harmony, that are inherently valuable. Certainly the extraordinary global impact of Japanese aesthetics in the late nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries results at least in part from their ability to produce such pleasure.

Unlike most Western aesthetics, however, which recognize (aesthetic) pleasure, independent of other values (truth and falsity, good and evil), as the primary value of aesthetic experience, the various Japanese aesthetics recognize a range of objectives and effects that is more complex. First, there is a wider range of types of aesthetic pleasure. Those best known and most influential in the West include aware/mononoaware (物物)物物 (an awareness of the poignance of things, connected to a Buddhist sense of transience and to passing beauty); yūgen 物物 (deep or mysterious and powerful beauty, especially in Noh theater); wabi 物 (powerlessness, loneliness, shabbiness, wretchedness); sabi 物, (the beauty accompanying loneliness, solitude, quiet); shibui 物物 (an ascetic quality or astringency, literally the sensation afforded by a pomegranate, which also imparts a rich but sober color to wood stains, etc.); iki 物 (style or chic); mingei 物物 (folk art, craft); and aesthetics of tea: wa 物 (harmony), kei 敬 (respect), sei 物 (purity), jaku 物 (tranquility), etc., (Miner et al. 1985), together called categorical aesthetics.

Second, and more important, Japanese aesthetic experiences and activities are employed in the service of a wider range of objectives. These include (aesthetic) pleasure (however it be construed) and, in addition, the revelation of truth; self-cultivation that is not only artistic but also physical, social, emotional, psychological, and spiritual (even contributing to the attainment of salvation or enlightenment); the construction of personal, group, and national identity; and the formulation of relationships (intersubjectivity or cosubjectivity). Japanese arts and aesthetics amount to “cognitive prostheses” (to use a neologism from the fields of astronomy and information science) that extend the range of physical, cognitive, social, and emotional capabilities for both practitioners and audiences.

Pointing out these differences may wrongly suggest that many Japanese aesthetics and associated phenomena are inconceivable (or imperceptible) from a Western aesthetic point of view. It also raises the question of uniqueness, as problematic as that term may be.

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This chapter begins with an overview of the issue of uniqueness. After that it examines several of the unique objectives of Japanese aesthetics in further detail.

Uniqueness of Japanese Aesthetics

Japan may be the only polity that has repeatedly tried to establish its national identity or self-definition on the basis of aesthetics. Indeed, one might claim that the persistent claim of uniqueness, by both Japanese and outside observers, is itself one of the unique features of Japanese culture and identity. In fact, a (primarily Japanese) preoccupation with questions of what defines the Japanese as a people and how they differ from other nations (“Japanese exceptionalism” or, in a stronger version, “uniqueness”) has given rise to a field, Nihonjinron 物物物物 (the study of Japanese), as well as to counterarguments.1

Three major figures defined Japanese identity based on aesthetics. Motoori Norinaga 物物物物 (1730–1801), a founder of kokugaku 物物 (national learning),2 saw mono noaware as defining the Japanese. He argued that though aware is seen in poetry from the Man'yōshū敬敬敬 (late eighth or early ninth century, though some poems date to the fifth century), the idea as developed by Murasaki Shikibu 物物物 (c. 973–after1014) in her novel The Tale of Genji 敬敬敬敬 (ca. 1010), “enables … generalized sociality, transfiguring personal woes into a communal reverberation of sympathy” (Yoda 2004, 141). and Chinese literatures evinced nothing like Murasaki's concerns. Aware codiIes Japanese life in ways still felt today. Kuki Shūzō 物物物物 (1888–1941) claimed a similar role for iki, the sense of style or elegance characterizing bons vivants in the Edo 物物 period (1615–1868).3 Yanagi Sōetsu 物物物 (aka Y. Muneyoshi 物, 1889–1961) identified mingei 物物 (folk arts) as the definitive aesthetic—although, ironically, his theory was partially based on the aesthetics of Korean ceramics (see Brandt 2007).

The issue of purported Japanese uniqueness is exaggerated. After all, Japanese aesthetic values cannot be unique to the Japanese, or the rest of the world would not have pursued them to the extent they have. Indeed, there are real problems with the concept of Japanese uniqueness. The claims of uniqueness are sometimes self-contradictory. Moreover, none of them applies to all Japanese or all segments of Japanese society. A vast number of Japanese know or demonstrate nothing of the pertinent aesthetics. Often the claim of uniqueness is countered by Japanese and Americans on the basis either of its reductive or essentializing effects that make such claims either mistaken or demeaning (and usually in a self-serving way). Peter N. Dale

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lists three problematic aspects of “uniqueness.” First, it assumes that the Japanese constitute a culturally homogeneous racial entity, whose essence is unchanged from prehistorical times to the present day. (This is demonstrably erroneous on empirical and scientific grounds.) Second, it presupposes that the Japanese differ radically from all other known peoples. Third, it is consciously nationalistic, displaying a conceptual and procedural hostility to any mode of analysis that might be seen to derive from external, non- Japanese sources. In a general sense, then, the nihonjinron may be defined as works of cultural nationalism concerned with the ostensible “uniqueness” of Japan in any aspect, and that are hostile to both individual experience and the notion of internal socio-historical diversity (Dale 1986, ii).

Yet uniqueness itself need not entail essentialization of Japanese character or culture. In fact, a number of unique events features have significant aesthetic dimensions. The Jōmon 物物, the earliest people in Japan, for example, are the only hunting-gathering people known to have developed pottery. Dance and music, used to entice the Sun Goddess out of her cave,4 play unusual roles in creation myths and worship.5 Japanese shōgun 物 物 (medieval lords) may well be the only military rulers in world history who were also masters of aesthetics and connoisseurs, and whose closest advisors—including generals—were masters of aesthetics. (Sen no Rikyū 物物 物 [1522–1591], the founder of modern tea ceremony aesthetics, was advisor to shōguns Oda Nobunaga 物物物物 [1534–1582] and Toyotomi Hideyoshi 物物 物物 [1537–1598].) Shōguns even used aesthetic mastery and involvement in the arts as a strategy to preoccupy the warrior class and prevent fighting. The mainstreaming of women's voices in a civilization's canon is similarly without parallel, and with ramifications yet to be explored (Miller 1993). Arts and aesthetics have contributed to the reconstruction of culture and values after the mass trauma of atomic attacks. These historical facts should not be used to essentialize Japanese character or culture. They do point to its exceptional reliance on aesthetics.

Contrasting Definitions of Aesthetics

Since the eighteenth century, when the term and the field of inquiry were introduced by Hume, Shaftesbury, Burke, and especially Kant, “aesthetics” in Europe and America has referred to the study of (1) certain kinds of intrinsically valuable experience (called aesthetic) of (perhaps numerous varieties of) pleasure, especially experience of the Beautiful and the Sublime; (2) the conditions arousing such experience (whether artistic or natural); and (3) certain kinds of related activity such as expression, self-expression,

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obfuscation or support of ideology, and so forth. A distancing or removal of experience from ordinary expectations of utility and from considerations of truth/falsity and good/bad is usually thought to be a necessary (but not sufficient) condition for aesthetic experience.6

One may think that the distancing or detachment from ordinary life that is characteristic of Buddhism characterizes Japanese aesthetics. Steve Odin, for example, emphasizes detachment in (Buddhist) aesthetics and presents Kyoto School philosophers such as Nishida Kitarō 物物 物物物 (1870–1945), Nishitani Keiji 物物 物物 (1900–1990), Hisamatsu Shin'ichi 物物物物 (1889–1980) as

articulat[ing] a threefold dialectical Zen logic of emptiness that moves from “being” (u) to “relative nothingness” (sōtaiteki mu) to “absolute nothingness” (zettai mu), which in turn corresponds to a sliding scale of degrees of attachment and nonattachment. While the eternalistic standpoint of being is characterized by attachment to the separate ego and substantial objects, and the nihilistic standpoint of relative nothingness is characterized by attachment to nothingness itself, the middle way of absolute nothingness is characterized by a mental attitude of total nonattachment that affirms things in their concrete particularity without clinging to either being or nonbeing, existence or nonexistence, form or emptiness, presence or absence. (Odin 2001, 121)7

It is equally possible, however, to view the entire history of Japanese arts and aesthetics as just the opposite: a series of attempts to make every aspect of daily life an aesthetic experience, even possibly entailing attachment.8 This may be a matter of attitude, like the detachment Odin describes, but it focuses more on actions and objects (or their arrangement or relations, or the space between them [ma 物).9 As a result, in this view aesthetics are often tied to the notions of identity, self-cultivation, and personal relationships.

Before venturing into these exceptional aspects of Japanese aesthetics, we need to address the applicability of the term “aesthetics” in the context of Japan. As Michele Marra correctly points out, the term “aesthetics” was introduced only in the eighteenth century. Hence, he argues, applying it outside the modern West (and especially in Japan) is inappropriate (Marra 1999). Indeed, prior to the Japanese discovery of German philosophers in the

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Meiji 物物 period (1868–1911), nothing comparable to this strict usage of the philosophical term “aesthetic” was known in Japan.

Ever since Japanese writers began studying Western aesthetics in the Meiji, however, they have both studied its applicability to their own preexisting concepts and phenomena, and used it in their own ways.10 Unless we accept these wider usages as “aesthetic,” there is no ready way to refer to these various usages.

Marra's criticism, in any event, applies only to the strictest definition. For even in Western philosophy, the term “aesthetics” commonly has two additional meanings. It is also used by philosophers to denote any study within the philosophy of art (and the nonutilitarian use of nature), such as the ontology, epistemology, phenomenology of art, and so forth. This is the definition used by the American Society for Aesthetics and the British Society for Aesthetics and their journals. Also, the term is retrospectively applied to any philosophy of art or beauty, going back to Plato (427–347 BCE). Japan has a thirteen-hundred-year history of writing about art in these ways, and “aesthetics” is a useful way of referring to it so long as we do not mislead ourselves into thinking that what the earlier Japanese writers were doing is identical to or philosophically dependent on Western aesthetics.

Aesthetic Pleasure: Everyday Life

There have been several Japanese approaches that convert ordinary aspects of everyday life into an aesthetic work or act. Ornamentation of everyday objects through artistry, design, and embellishment is characteristic of Japanese material culture generally and even reveals the spiritual dimensions of everyday life and objects (Tsuji 1994). A distinctively upper- class version is the Heian 物物 era (794–1185) notion of miyabi 物, courtly elegance, described by Murasaki in The Tale of Genji and by Sei Shōnagon 物物物物 (c. 966–1017) in The Pillow Book (Makura no Sōshi 物物物物, c. 990– 1002). In a different context (the middle-class life of the pleasure quarters and the dandy about town), we can observe in the Edo period notion iki (varieties of chic or stylishness), in which every decision has aesthetic import, not only the choice of fabric for one's clothes, but also the angle of its drapery and physical posture.

Many people take Zen 物 Buddhist aesthetics in a similar way: as a reworking of everyday objects, spaces, arrangements of objects, and activities to make them conform to aesthetic values and produce aesthetic experience. An ability to produce (certain kinds of) aesthetically satisfying works

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(calligraphy, painting, garden design) is sometimes seen as evidence of enlightenment. Artworks by Zen masters are valued largely for that reason.

In the case of Zen aesthetics, however, the value of aesthetic experience must be carefully examined. First, Dōgen Zenji 物物物物 (aka Dōgen Kigen 物物 1200–1253), the founder of the Sōtō 物物 school of Zen and the mastermind behind Zen aesthetics (Heine 1989, 1991; Yokoi Yūhō 1976), valued aesthetic experience, recommending it be incorporated into the daily life of monks (in his discussions of preparation of food, for instance). Yet his recommendation seems to have been for an instrumental reason—for the fact that if people enjoyed eating, they were less distracted from their ultimate purpose of seeking enlightenment. Second, it would seem that in Zen, the aesthetic contributes to the pursuit of enlightenment by eliminating unnecessary chaos and distraction, such as that provided either by lack of aesthetic awareness (clutter) or by other kinds of aesthetics: the gorgeous, the flamboyant, and so forth. It contributes a specific kind of tranquility to mental life that is valuable not only inherently but also instrumentally— for the ways it helps you attain larger goals, including (but not limited to) enlightenment. It is instrumental in that it contributes to reaching the spiritual goal that is distanced from the goals of ordinary life—finding food and shelter, accumulation of wealth, political advancement, and so forth.

Nonetheless, in the context of Buddhism, one must consider the possibility of more direct relations between aesthetic experience and enlightenment. Ananda K. Coomaraswamy drew attention to the recognition within even early Theravada Buddhism of aesthetic shock (Pali samvega) as an inherently valuable experience and a catalyst for enlightenment, and to the Theravada comparison of reactions to beauty with reactions to divinity (Coomaraswamy 1943). A sudden shift of attitude toward an ordinary object may provoke or be analogous to enlightenment.

Something strikingly similar seems to occur in Shinto—without, of course, a doctrinal connection to enlightenment: a sense of the power inherent in natural beauty that grabs one's attention and overwhelms one with its force. It is this awareness that is considered by some as the source not only of much early poetry but also of Murasaki's aware—and theorized by Motoori as the source of Japanese sociality and identity when shared with others through poetry (Yoda 2004, 129–130).

Not only decorated artifacts but also undecorated or natural objects may inspire specifically aesthetic experience. This tendency, which came to be called aware or mononoaware, the “ah-ness” of things, was well established

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by the time of the Man'yōshū. With aware, one recognizes aspects of the natural environment, such as blossoms falling, as worthy of contemplation and productive of enjoyment. Waka 物物 (Japanese- as opposed to Chinese- style poems) focusing on such topics record the poet's initial perception or flash of insight and trigger another in readers. In haiku 物物, too, we see that anything can inspire aesthetic experience, though in haiku it is expressed in ordinary, not poetic, language. For Matsuo Bashō 物物 物物 (1644–1694), the most cerebrated haiku poet, even the sound of water as a frog jumps in is worthy of aesthetic celebration.

Making, serving, and drinking tea, moreover, have been made into aesthetic experience, converted into fine art by complex means.11 Aesthetic attitude is crucial: Sen tea ceremony uses peasant objects (iron teakettles, bamboo implements), local rather than exotic or out-of-season flowers, and architecture based on simple farmers' huts. They become valuable aesthetic objects through their recognition as such (as Yanagi showed with regard to Korean folk pottery, whose aesthetic value is ignored by the farmers who make and use it, and recognized only by the Japanese), by ritual, and by their new context. Taking them out of their original context does not mean eliminating use, however (unlike putting them into a museum). On the contrary, they are put to the purpose of transforming mundane activities (eating, drinking tea, sharing time with friends) into art of the highest order.

While all of these cases are distanced from everyday concerns in the sense of ordinary people's and society's obsessions, none is separated from either the pursuit of ordinary everyday activities (eating, washing up) or from the ultimate “interest” the individual has in his or her spiritual welfare. In the end, disinterestedness, so crucial to Western aesthetics, may not be of much use in understanding Japanese aesthetics, as the duality on which it is based is faulty.

Aesthetics, Art, and Truth

The first Japanese to theorize art was Kūkai 物物 (aka Kōbō Daishi 物物物物, 774–835), for whom arts were forms of religious activity. Kūkai, a renowned Buddhist priest, calligrapher, and poet (in Chinese), studied esoteric Buddhism in China for two years, brought the Shingon 物物(True Word) school of esoteric Buddhism back to Japan, and established the renowned Kōya-san 物物物 Temple. Kūkai identified four categories of religious activity: painting (especially mandalas) and sculpture; music and literature; “gestures and acts” (ritual, dance, and mudrās, religious hand positions of Indian origin used in meditation); and implements of civilization and religion. Awa Henro

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points out that “The importance that Kōbō Daishi … placed on architecture should not be underestimated, [he] went so far as to prescribe the ideal symmetry, shape and geometric forms suitable for use in an altar” (Awa 1983, 11).12

For Kūkai, arts were not only forms of religious rituals but also means to understanding truth, or wisdom, that language could barely approach. Kūkai reported that his Chinese master, Abbot Huiguo 物物 (746–805):

Informed me that the Esoteric scriptures are so abstruse that their meaning cannot be conveyed except through art. … In truth, the esoteric doctrines are so profound as to defy their enunciation in writing. With the help of painting, however, their obscurities may be understood. (Tsunoda, de Bary, and Keene 1958, 141)

Given the dramatic increases in intellectual understanding afforded in the modern and postmodern world by cartography, graphs, three-dimensional modeling, and so forth, we may now have a greater sympathy than we once had for the Buddhist claim that visual records can make complex realities clearer than can language. (If language seems to us today superior to visual arts in its ability to express ideas, it may be because we have in fact learned how to make ordinary language support conceptual innovation, and have developed philosophical thought—in natural, computer, logical and mathematical languages.)

It is important to note that, although the Buddhist view, like Plato's, is that the phenomenal world is an illusion, no view could be more diametrically opposed than Kūkai's to Plato's conception of art as imitation of an apparent “reality” that is itself only shadows of reality. That is, while the phenomenal world may be an illusion in both cases, there is in Buddhist metaphysics no ideal world behind it that is obscured. What we take to be reality may be an illusion, and language may inevitably distort our perceptions of reality, but visual arts may provide the clearest indication of reality (outside of its direct apprehension through enlightened meditation). Similarly, in sharp contrast to Plato's explicit dictum that “the poets lie too much,” the Japanese view that art provides access to truth that is superior to that provided by language similarly privileges literary over literal (logical) language.

The driving force of Kūkai's impact derives from his own enlightenment, buttressed—and made evident for subsequent generations—by his masterful poetry and calligraphy. This initiates a tradition of grounding aesthetics in either enlightenment or total mastery of an art that continues through today.

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Japan's greatest theorists have often also been her great artists (at least until the introduction of Western philosophy in the late nineteenth century)—even when they also worked in the military, religion, or science.