REFLECTIONS The Japanese Idea of Beauty During the past decade, Western specialists have tirelessly analyzed the economic triumphs of “Japan, Inc.” As a result, many Americans have forgotten that there is more to Japan than “quality circles,” Toyotas, and Sony transistor radios. What also matters to the Japanese is a vener- able national culture, whose traditions in art, theater, and literature still influence everyday life. Here, Donald Keene discusses four aspects of the Japanese ideal of beauty. It is, he explains, an ideal that survives even in contemporary Tokyo, where “branches of artificial maple leaves along a commercial street” defy the threatening ubiquity of Mc- Donald's golden arches. by Donald Keene [ical bg aiticut 2p, describe ade quately in the course of a few pages the full range of Japanese aesthetics or even to. suggest the main features of Japanese taste as it has evolved over the centuries. It probably would be even more difficult to discuss any aspect of Japanese culture without alluding to the Japanese sense of beauty, perhaps the central element in all of Japanese culture. T will attempt to describe some of the characteristics of Japanese taste in terms of one book, Tsurezuregusa (Essays in Idle- ness), a collection of 243 short essays by the priest Kenk6, written mainly between 1330 and. 1333. This work does not explain the whole of Japanese aesthetics, but contains much that illuminates Japanese preferences today, despite the long interval of time since it was written and despite the immense changes that Japanese civiliza- tion has undergone, WO NEW YEAR'S 1989 128 The author is generally known by his. name as a Buddhist priest, Kenko. His name when he was born in 1283 was Urabe no Kaneyoshi, and he came from a family of hereditary Shint priests. It is somewhat surprising that a man of a Shintd background should have become a Buddhist, but the two religions of Japan, though antithetical in many respects, were both accepted by the Japanese; in general, the Japanese in the past (and the present) have turned to Shint6 for help in this life, and to Buddhism for salvation in the world to come, Kenk6, though his rank as a Shintd priest was modest, seems to have won a secure place in court circles thanks to his skill at composing poetry. This alone should suggest how highly poetic skill was valued by the court, which in most re- spects was acutely conscious of rank and ancestry.THE JAPANESE IDEA OF BEAUTY A 15thcentury mountain landscape by the Japanese artist Sesshus. Kenké took Buddhist orders in 1324 at the age of 41, after the death of the Em- peror Go-Uda, whom he had served. Many reasons have been adduced for his deci- sion to “leave the world,” but nothing in his writings suggests that it was an act of despair. Kenké certainly was sincere when he urged readers to “flee from the Burning House” of this world and find refuge in re- ligion. But he did not in the least resemble the typical Buddhist monks of the mes eval period, who either lived in monaster- ies or were hermits, Kenko lived in the city and was as familiar with worldly gos- Wo NEW YEARS 1989 129THE JAPANESE IDEA OF BEAUTY sip as with Buddhist doctrine. Certain Buddhist beliefs, notably those about the impermanence of all things, run through his work: but even though he insisted that possessions that people accurnulate in this world do not last, he did not condemn them as hateful dross, as a more orthodox Buddhist priest might have. Obviously, he did not reject the world. Ultimately, this yore sat Det ens 4 at Reis some lways to ring that while we are here on Earth we should try to enrich our lives with beauty. ‘ome years ago, when writing an essay S= Japanese tastes, I chose four charac- ics that seemed to me of special im- portance: ion, irregularity, simplic- ity, and bility. These still seem to me to be a valid way to approai japanese sense of beauty, ‘even if they do not cover everything. Gen- eralizations are always risky. If, for exam- ple, one says of the No drama ‘that it is a crystallization of Japanese preferences for understatement, muted expression, and lic gesture, how is one to explain hy the Japanese have also loved Kabuki, Which is characterized by Jangerthan life poses, fierce declamation, brilliant stage inn feel quite sure tha ! ‘Again, I feel quite sure that no people are more sensitive to beauty than the Japa- nese, but one Japanese critic, Sakaguchi Ango, wrote in 1942, “A more convenient life is more important to the Japanese than the beauty of tradition <2 pesos Japanese ice. Ne discomforted if all the temples in Kyoto and Buddhist statues in Nara were com- letely destroyed, but we would certainly e inconvenienced if the. streetcars stopped running.” Sakaguchi was bein; eynieal, but there is more than a grain of truth in what he wrote, and it took some courage to publish such ideas in 1942, at a time when the Japanese were otherwise asserting the spiritual superiority of their culture. With these cautions in mind, 1 would like to discuss the four aspects of Japanese taste I noted above, referring particularly to Kenk6's opinions in Essays in Idleness. The most eloquent expression of Kenké’s advocacy of suggestion as an aes- thetic principle is found in section 137: Are we to look at cherry blossoms only in fall bloom, the moon only when it is cloudless? To long for a moon while looking on the rain, to lower the blinds and be unaware of the passing of the spring—these are even more deeply moving. Branches about to blossom or gardens strewn with faded flowers are i our admiration .... People com- monly regret that the cherry blos- soms scatter or that the moon sinks in the sky, and this is natural; but only an exceptionally insensitive man would say, “This branch and that branch have lost their blossoms. There is nothing worth seeing now.” In all things, it is the beginnings and ends that are interesting. Does the love between men and women refer only to the moments when they are in each other's arms? The man who grieves over a love affair broken off before it was fulilled, who be- wails empty vows, wi long autumn highs alone, who lets his thoughts wander to distant skies, who for the past in a dilapidated house—such a man truly knows what love means. ‘The moon that appears close to dawn after we have long waited for it moves us more profoundly than the full moon shining cloudless over a thousand leagues. And how incompa- rably lovely is the moon, almost reenish in is Lpht, when seen of the cedars deep inthe mountains, or when it hides for a moment behind clustering clouds during a sudden shower! ... ‘And are we to look at the moon and the cherry blossoms with our ‘Donald L. Keene, 66, is professor of Japanese literature at Columbia University. Born in New York City, he received an A.B. (1942) and a Ph.D. (1949) from Columbia. His many books include Nd, The Classical Theater of Japan (1966) and World Within Walls (1976). This essay is adapted from a chapter ira The Pleasures of Japanese Literature. Copyright © 1988 by Columbia University Press. (WO NEW YEAR'S 1989 130‘THE JAPANESE IDEA OF BEAUTY ‘eyes alone? How much more evoca- tive and pleasing it is to think about the spring without stirring from the house, to dream of the moonlight ‘though we remain in our room! Kenké presents his views so compel- ingly that we may assent without noticing that they contradict commonly held West- em views on the same subjects. ‘The Western ideal of the climactic mo- ment—when Laocotn and his sons are caught in the terrible embrace of the ser- pent, when the soprano hits high C, or ‘when the rose is in full bloom—grants lit- tle importance to the ings and ends. ‘The Japanese have also been aware of the I of climactic moments: They cele- brate the full moon far more often than the crescent, and the radio breathlessly in- forms listeners when the cherry blossoms ‘will be in full bloom, not when they are likely to scatter. But although the Japanese share with other peoples a fondness for flowers in full bloom, their love of the barely opened buds and of fallen blossoms is distinctive. The Japanese seem to have been aware that the full moon (or the full flowering of a tree), however lovely, blocks the play of the imagination. The full moon or the cherry blossoms at their peak do not sug- gest the crescent or the buds (or the wan- ing moon and the strewn flowers), but the crescent and the buds do suggest full flow- ering. Beginnings that suggest what is to ‘come, or ends that suggest what has been, allow the imagination room to expand be- yond the literal facts to the limits of the Capacities of the reader of a poem, the spectator aa NO play, or the connotsseur of a monochrome painting. ‘Kenké did not create the preference for beginnings and ends that he describes, but he was probably the first to state it as a principle. The innumerable love poems preserved in anthologies of Japanese po- etry almost never express the joy of meet ing the beloved; instead, they convey the: poet's yearning for a meeting, or else his— ‘or more commonly, her—sorrow at the re- alization that an affair is over and there will not be another meeting. a dBi In Jag painting, especially of period when Kenko was writing, the use of suggestion is carried to great lengths, a few brush strokes serving to suggest ranges of mountains, or a single stroke a stalk of bamboo. A desire to suggest rather than to state in full was surely behind the prefer- ence for ink paintings. No people has a surer sense of color than the Japanese, and there are many splendid Japanese works of art jn bint estons: Et n the medi- ev especially, many painters re- pounced color in favor of monochromes,T have never seen any reason stated for this preference, but I wonder whether it also ‘was not dictated by an awareness of the power of suggestion. A mountain painted in green can never be any other color but green, but a mountain whose outlines are given with a few strokes of black ink can ‘be any color. second notable characteristic of Japa- nese taste is irregularity, and once again I tum to Kenko for an illustrative paseage. He says: ‘'In everything, no mat- ter it it may be, uniformity is unde- sirable, Leaving something incomplete makes it interesting, and gives one the feel- ing that there is room for growth.” Kenké gave an example of what he meant: “People often say that a set of books looks ugly if all volumes are not in the same format, but I was impressed to hear the Abbot K6yii say, ‘It is typical of the unintelligent man to insist on assem- bling complete sets of everything. Imper- fect sets are better’” I doubt that many ians would agree with the Abbot ,, but anyone who has ever faced a complete set of the Harvard Classics or any similar series of volumes knows how uninviting it is. The Japanese have been partial not nly to incompleteness but 10 another vax riety of irregularity, asymmetry. This is one + in which they differ conspicuously from the Chinese and other peoples of Asia, In ancient (and modern) Iranian art there is often a tree in the center of the Picture or a pattern with beasts on either Side. If a line is drawn vertically tht the tree, what ison the right side is likely to be a mirror image of what is on the left. ‘One finds symmetry also in Chinese art and architecture, though it is not quite so rigid. The typical plan of a Chinese monas- (WO NEW YEAR'S 1989 BITHE JAPANESE IDEA OF BEAUTY tery has the same buildings on one side of central axis as on the other. But in Japan, even when the original plan called for symmetry along Chinese fines, it did not take long for the buildings to cluster, seemingly of their own volition, on one side or the other. In literary style, Parallels in poetry and prose is a staple feature of Chinese ex- pression. Japanese writing that is not spe- cifically under Chinese influence avoids parallelism, and the standard verse forms are in irregular numbers of lines—five fo the ranka, three for the haiku, This is in marked contrast to the quatrains that are ical poetic forms not only in China but ighout most of the world. We find the same tendency in calligra- phy too. The Japanese, ever since they ac- quired skill in writing Chinese characters, have excelled in grass writing,” the cur- sive script, but there are few outstanding examples of the more formal syle of cal ligraphy, which the Japanese happily leave to the Chinese. Japanese children are taught in calligraphy lessons never to bi- sect a horizontal stroke with a vertical one: The vertical stroke should always cross the horizontal one at some point not equidis- tant from both ends. A syrnmetrical char- acter is considered to be “dead.” The wri ing most admired by the Japanese tends to bbe lopsided or at any rate highly individ. ual, and copybook perfection is admired only with condescension. Irregularity is also a feature of Japa- nese ceramics, especially those varieties that are most admired by the Japanese themselves. The Bizen or Shigaraki wares that are the delight of connoisseurs are al- most never regular in shape. Some of the finest examples are lopsided or bumpy, and the glaze may have been applied in such a way as to leave bald patches here and there. A roughness caused by tin} stones in the clay is also much adie. These would be serious faults if the potter had intended to make a bowl or jar in a symmetrical shape with an even glaze and failed, but that was clearly not his aim. The Japanese have produced flawless exam- ples of porcelain, and these too are ad- mired, but they are not much loved. Irregularity is present too in flower ar- rangements (notably those based on (WO NEW YEAR'S 1989 132 “heaven, earth, and man”) and in gardens. The gardens at Versailles, with their geo- metrical precision, would hardly have struck the Japanese of the past as a place for relaxation. The celebrated Japanese gardens insist on irregularity as deter- minedly as the classical European gardens insisted on symmetry. K spits much 10 say sbout the third characteristic of Japanese aesthetics that I would like to discuss, simplicity. 1 will quote a few of his views, from section 10 of Essays in Idleness: A house, I know, is but a temporary abode, but how delightful it is to find one that has harmonious proportions and a pleasant atmosphere. One feels somehow that even moonlight, when it shines into the quiet domicile of a person of taste, is more affecting than elsewhere. A house, though it may not be in the current fashion or elab- orately decorated, will appeal to us by its unassuming beauty—a grove of trees with an indefinably ancient look; a garden where plants, growing of their own accord, have a special charm; a verandah and an open-work wooden fence of interesting con- struction; and a few personal effects left lying about, giving the place an air of having been lived in. A house which multitudes of workmen have polished with every care, where strange and rare Chinese and Japa- nese furnishings are displayed, and even the bushes and trees of the gar- den have been trained unnaturally, is ugly to look at and most depressing. How could anyone live for long in such a place? Kenké expresses himself so well that we are likely to agree, perhaps a little too easily; houses that multitudes of workmen have polished with every care have gener- ally been considered very desirable, as we know from old photographs showing the profusion of treasures with which the drawing rooms of the rich used to be adorned. Gardens where even the bushes and trees have been trained unnaturally still attract visitors to the great houses ofTHE JAPANESE IDEA OF BEAUTY Europe. Kenké asks rhetorically, “How could anyone live for long in such a place?” but generations of Europeans and even some Americans seem to have had no trouble. Perhaps Kenko would answer this with another passage: “It is excellent for a man to be simple in his tastes, to avoid extrava- ganice, to own no possessions, to entertain no craving for worldly success. It has been true since ancient days that wise men are rarely rich. jously, however, people have to live in houses of some sort, and Kenks, for all his insistence on simplicity, was certainly not urging people to live in hovels. Here is how he described the kind of house he liked: “A house should be built with the summer in mind. In winter it is possible to live anywhere, but a badly house is unbearable when it gets hot... People agree that a house which has plenty of spare room is attractive to look at and may be put to many uses.” Kenkd's prescription has been fol- lowed by many Japanese, as anyone who has spent a winter in a Kyoto house knows. When the Japanese settled Hok- kaid6 in the late 19th century they still went on building with the summer in mind, and quietly froze in the winter. But leaving aside the matter of temperature, Kenko's insistence on having plenty of wre room has typified Japanese houses at eir most artistic. It is easy too for us to t the principle that it is better to have too little rather than too much furniture; we have been trained to believe that “less is more,” but this was not true of people at the beginning of this century. ‘Simplicity as an aesthetic principle is, of course, not confined to houses and their furnishings. Perhaps the most extreme ex: ample of the Japanese love for unobtrusive elegance is the tea ceremony. The ideal sought by the great tea master Sen. no Rikyli (1521-1591) was sabi, for “rust,” or sabireru, “to become desolate.” This ‘may seem like a curious aesthetic ideal, but it ‘was perhaps a reaction to parvenu extrava- gance in an age when military mei tained sudden power and wealth. Ril sabi was not the enforced simplicity of the man who could not afford better, but a re- fusal of easily obtainable luxury, a prefer- ence for a rusty-looking kettle to one of a gleaming newness. ‘The tea ceremony is sometimes at- tacked today as a perversion of the ideal of simplicity. The prized utensils are by no means ordinary wares but may cost for- tunes. But the spending of a great deal of money in order to achieve an appearance of bare simplicity is quite in keeping with Japanese tradition. One more example of the Japanese preference for simplicity is found in Japa- nese food, and not only the variety served in connection with the tea ceremony. Jap- anese food lacks the intensity of flavor found in other Asian cuisines. Spices are seldom used, garlic almost never. Just as the faint perfume of the plum blossom is preferred to the heavy odor of the lily the rely perceptible differences in flavor be- tween diiferent varieties of raw fish are prized and paid for extravagantly. The taste of natural ingredients, not tampered with by sauces, is the ideal of Japanese cuisine; and the fineness of a man’s palate is often tested by his ability to distinguish among virtually tasteless dishes of the same spe- cies, The early European visitors to Japan, though they praised almost everything else, had nothing good to say about Japa- nese food. Bernardo de Avila Girén wrote, “Twill not praise Japanese food for itis not good, albeit it is pleasing to the eye, but instead I will describe the clean and pecu- liar way in which it is served.” His judg- ment was repeated by foreign visitors for the next 300 years. The current popularity of Japanese food in the United States may be another sign of the general trend to- ward a congruence of contemporary American and traditional Japanese tastes, T iz last ofthe four qualities of Japancse aesthetic preference is the most un- usual: perishability. In_ the West, perma- nence rather than perishability has been desired, and this had led men to build monuments of deathless marble. The real- ization that even such monuments crum- ble—proof of the inexorability of the rav- ‘ages of time—has led men since the age of the Greeks to reflect on the uncertainty of the world. Lafcadio Hearn (1850-1904), a widely read American popularizer of Japanese WO NEW YEARS 1989 133‘THE JAPANESE IDEA OF BEAUTY landscapes and customs, wrote: Generally speaking, we construct for endurance, the Japanese for imper- manency. Few things for common use are made in Japan with a view to durability. The straw sandals worn out and replaced at each stage of a journey; the robe consisting of a few simple widths loosely stitched to- gether for wearing, and unstitched again for washing; the fresh chop- sticks served to each new guest at a hotel; the light shoji frames serving at once for windows and walls, and re- papered twice a year; the mattings re- newed every autumn—all these are but random examples of countless ‘small things in daily life that illustrate the national contentment with im- permanency. Hearn's comments were astute, but it might be even more accurate to say that the Japanese have not only been content with impermanency, but have eagerly sought it. Once more, a passage from Kenko helps to illuminate this traditional preference: Somebody once remarked that thin silk was not satisfactory as a scroll wrapping becat ‘it_was so easily torn. Ton’a replied, “It is only after the silk wrapper has frayed at top and bottom, and the mother-of-pearl has fallen from the roller that a scroll looks beautiful.” This opinion dem- onstrated the excellent taste of the man, Signs of wear and tear such as the fray- ing of asilk wrapper or the loss of mother: oF pear! inlay from the roller would proba- bly dismay most other people, and it is likely that the owner would send for a re- storer, but in Japan an object of such per- fection that it might have been made yes- terday has seemed less desirable than a work that has passed through many hands and shows it. The common Western crav- ing for objects in mint condition, that look as if they were painted or sculpted the day before, tends to deprive objects of their history; the Japanese prize the evidence WO NEW YEAR'S 1989 134 that the work of art has been held in many hands. Western traditions seem to go back to the Greeks, who constantly bewailed the uncertainty of fate and insisted that no man should be called happy until he was dead, lest cruel Nemesis catch up with him. The Japanese were perhaps the first to discover the special pleasure of imper- manence, and Kenkd especially believed that impermanence was a necessary ele- ment in beauty. He wrote early in Essays in Idleness, “If man were never to fade away like the dews of Adashino, never to vanish like the smoke over Toribeyama, but lingered on forever in this world, how things would lose their power to move us! The most precious thing in life is its uncer- tainty.” The frailty of human existence, a common theme in the literature of the world, has probably not been recognized elsewhere than in Japan as a necessary condition of beauty. Tove the Japanese have for ch blossoms surely is also connected wit the appreciation of perishability. Cherry blossoms are lovely, it is true, but not so lovely as to eclipse totally the beauty of peach Blossoms or phum blossoms. But the Japanese plant cherry trees wherever they can, even in parts of the country whose climate isnot suitable for these rather del- cate trees. Perhaps the greatest attraction of the cherry blossoms is not their beauty but their pershabilty: Plum blossoms re; main on the boughs for a month or so, and other fruit trees have blossoms for at least a week, but cherry blossoms normally fall alter a brief three days of flowering, a fact, that countless. poets have had occasion to: lament. Japanese, when traveling abroad, are sometimes startled by the indifference of people in the West to the signs of process in nature. The teamaster Rikyii is said to have scattered a few leaves over a garden. path that had recently been swept, in order to give it a natural look and to emphasize the sense of process; and the great novelist Natsume Sdseki, when traveling in Europe. atthe beginning of this century, was struck by the insensitivity of Europeans to the beauty of the changes effected by nature. He wrote:THE JAPANESE IDEA OF BEAUTY When I was in England, I was once laughed at because I invited some- one for snow-viewing. At another time I described how deeply the feel ings of Japanese are affected by the moon, and my listeners were only .. [was invited to Scotland to stay at a palatial house. One day, when the master and I took a walk in. the garden, I noted that the paths be- tween the rows of trees were all thickly covered with moss. I offered a compliment, saying that these paths had magnificently acquired a look of age. Whereupon my host replied that he intended soon to get a gardener to scrape all this moss away. Natsume Sdseki was a novelist, that is, man who invented stories for a living, so ‘we need not take his anecdote as literal ‘truth, But it is unquestionable that Soseki Sree Ga vite coco packs oon moon, ns with mossy to herbaceous borders or avenues of care- fully trimmed evergreens. He was heir to tasies that had evolved in Japan over many centuries, partly under the influence of Kenk6's writings. Sdseki had also read a great deal of English literature and pos- sessed a rei Je store of knowledge concerning such varied authors as Shake- speare, Laurence Sterne, and George Mer- edith; but apparently athe most funda- menial level, the level of his appreciation of beauty, concepts other than those he found in Western books still dominated. The Mester sistor to Japan today who expects to find examples of exquisite beauty wherever he looks is likely to be disappointed and even shocked by his first encounters with contemporary culture. He will notice Kentucky Fried. Chicken establishments and other fast-food shops, the ugliness of commercial signs, and the blank looks on. the faces of people in ing to places of business that more clearly resemble contemporary models in the West than anything traditional. But the ast survives in es that often find surprising outlets for expression —a box of i, a diay of lacquered zori, branches of artifici le leaves along a commer- cial street. And the man who prides him- self. on his elegantly tailored Western clothes wil be delighted to sit in Japanese style, destroying creases, at a restau- rant where traditional food is served with traditional elegance. Thus, the Japanese aesthetic past is not dead. It accounts for the magnificent pro- fusion of objects of art that are produced each year, and its principles, the ones I have described, are not forgotten even in an age of incessant change. Arve WO NEW YEARS 1989 135