Japan

1
Japan

• A Civilisation and a Religion

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Japanese Syncretism (cultural blending of
distinct religions.)

• BUDDHISM

• SHINTO Way of the Gods'

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Japanese Syncretism, cont.

• BUDDHISM

• SHINTO

4
Shuichi Kato on Japan Literature

• No story to history no plan no plot of events.
• undeniable tendency of Japanese culture is to
  avoid logic, the abstract, systemization, in
  favour of emotion, the concrete, the
  unprogrammatic.
• Events are accumulative by addition
• Japan assimilates by a simple addition of an
  external concept or item and then
  recontextualising it
• In the West, there is an accommodation required
  a reconfiguration of the addition or of the
  entire system around it.
• No transcendental values which means that when
  adding new not necessary to discard the old. No
  cultural crisis.
• Born Shinto, Married Christian Buried Buddhist

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Civilisations (one conception of)

• A civilisation is a shared set of values,
  culture, art, architecture, history and ways of
  life and most of all, fundamental and (usually)
  unconscious assumptions about the way that the
  world works and is.

• Latin American
• Orthodox
• Baltics, Greece, Eastern Europe, Russia
• Eastern
• Muslim
• Japan
• Sub-Saharan African
• Western
• Anglosphere western Europe

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Cultural Exclusivity Thesis

• Give every civilisation the benefit of its own
  assumptions
• Civilisation chauvinism to assume ones own
  civilisation has the universal understanding
• Approach other civilisations and cultures from
  the assumption that their fundamental values and
  understanding of the world is different from your
  own.
• Universality (multiculturalism) may be a
  Euro-centric ideology?

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Western Civilisation Values

1. All civilisations and cultures are fully
   explainable from Western premises and methods.
2. Western science is the universally-valid method
   of study.
3. All civilisations and cultures perceive the
   worldconfigure phenomenaidentically and in away
   that Western science can explain

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Japanese Civilisation Assumptions

• Intensely subjective
• Context creates meaning
• demons chuckle when they hear us talk about next
  year.
• Passivity a virtue when connected with reflection
• Æsthetics are more important than Logical
  consistency .
• Death is æstheticised in seppuku
• Only slight exaggeration to say that Japan is an
  æsthetic. Japanese relations to each
  otherformalities, hierarchies, ritualsand to
  nature are æsthetic,

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Japanese cultural assumptions examples.

• Western concept of symbolism one thing signifies
  another type of thing. Platonic Forms
  Judæo-Christian type-archetype Freudian
  conscious-subconscious
• Japan this thing is associated with that
  experience or aspect. Non symbolic.
• A lonely old tree is associated
  withinvokesthoughts of age and loneliness. The
  meaning is in the person, not the object an
  æsthetic approach to the world.

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Japanese cultural assumptions examples cont.

• Western Artthe fuller the mind of the perceiver
  the better the Art is appreciated
• Literary Modernism James Joyce Finnigans Wake
• Renaissance Art Giorgione The Tempest
• Japan the less the mind is active, the better.

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Renaissance Art Giorgione
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The Presence of Absence

• Hokusai
• ?????? (Under a Wave Off Kanagawa)

13
Shuichi Kato on Japan Religion

• No story to history no plan no plot of events.
• undeniable tendency of Japanese culture is to
  avoid logic, the abstract, systemization, in
  favour of emotion, the concrete, the
  unprogrammatic.
• Events are accumulative by addition
• Japan assimilates by a simple addition of an
  external concept or item and then
  recontextualising it
• In the West, there is an accommodation required
  a reconfiguration of the addition or of the
  entire system around it.
• No transcendental values which means that when
  adding new not necessary to discard the old. No
  cultural crisis.
• Born Shinto, Married Christian Buried Buddhist

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Japanese Religious Æsthetic Mujokan

• Mujokan A sense of transience
• the impermanent quality of life, nature, and
  human artifacts.
• Buddhism
• 4 Noble Truths
• 8-Fold Path

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Japanese Religious Æsthetic Mujokan

• Mujokan A sense of transience
• the impermanent quality of life, nature, and
  human artifacts.
• First of Buddhist 4 Noble Truths Dukkha
• love of ambiguity and the abhorrence of clarity
  in literature and everyday language
• tendency in design and architecture toward the
  asymmetrical and seasonal rather than the
  symmetrical and permanent
• click for current example yaeba.
• asymmetry is open to movement of observers eye
  or mind therefore suggests transience.

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Japan mushinno-mind

• Mushin is an intellectual, æsthetic martial
  concept
• remove the conscious mind from getting in the way
  of understanding, appreciation and response.
• Zen ?? from zenna a practice of meditation
• Zen koan emphasise meditation on nothing (mu)
• Japanese martial arts work toward mushin as
  highest warrior state

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Mushin ??
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mono no aware

• Mono no aware awareness of the pathos of
  things
• Mono things aware sadness.
• Lady Shikibu, c.985 Tale of Genji an literary
  sensibility.
• Contemplation of natural objectsold trees,
  plants, seasonsto reflect on the sadness of
  ones own transient existence.

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JapanSilence a significant cultural, personal,
religious, and artistic virtue.

• Iwanu ga hana. Not-speaking is the flower
  (Silence is golden.)
• Chinmoku kanjisink (down) no-word.
• Seijaku quietude loneliness-sabiness

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wabi-sabi

• Wabi refers to a wordview -- a sense of space,
  direction, or path
• Sabi is an aesthetic construct rooted in a given
  object and its features, plus the occupation of
  time, chronology.
• Wabi-sabi is a commonly unitary referral in
  modern times. Now, a pop æsthetic Honey, look
  at that darling wabisabi coffee table!

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wabi-sabi

• Metaphysical Basis
• Evolving toward or from nothingness change. Love
  equals death
• Spiritual Values
• Truth comes from observing nature.
• Greatness exists in the inconspicuous
  overlooked details.
• Beauty can be coaxed out of ugliness
• State of Mind
• Acceptance of the inevitable, appreciation of
  cosmic order
• Moral Precepts
• Get rid of desire and all that is unnecessary.
• Focus on the intrinsic ignore material
  hierarchy
• Local and cultural situation and order no
  absolute principle
• Material Qualities
• Suggestion of natural process irregularity,
  intimacies unpretentious earthy simple above
  all.

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wabi

• The original connotation of wabi is based on the
  aloneness or separation from society experienced
  by the hermit, suggesting to the popular mind a
  misery and sad forlornness i.e. mono no aware.
• The life of the hermit came to be called
  wabizumai in Japan, essentially "the life of
  wabi," a life of solitude and simplicity.
• Only by the fourteenth century in Japan were
  positive attributes ascribed to wabi and
  cultivated.
• Wabi is literally i.e. etymologically --
  poverty, but it came to refer not to merely
  absence of material possessions but
  non-dependence on material possessions. 2nd
  3rd of the 4 Noble Truths (suffering caused by
  craving divest of objects craved
• simplicity that has shaken off the material in
  order to relate directly with nature and reality.
  
• absence of dependence frees itself from
  indulgence, ornateness, and pomposity.

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wabi, cont

• Wabi is quiet contentment with simple things.
• In short, Wabi is a way of life or spiritual
  path.
• Zen principles inform wabi a native Japanese
  syncretism of Confucian, Taoist, Buddhism, and
  Shinto traditions.
• Typical of Japanese addition over Logic
• Wabi precedes the application of aesthetic.
• principles applied to objects and arts, this
  latter is Sabi

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sabi

• Sabi is the outward expression of aesthetic
  values built upon the metaphysical and spiritual
  principles of Zen
• translates these values into artistic and
  material qualities.
• Sabi considers natural processes result in
  objects that are
• Irregular
• Unpretentious (subtle)
• ambiguous. (See yaeba.)
• Sabi objects are
• irregular in being asymmetrical
• unpretentious in being the holistic fruit of
  wabizumai
• ambiguous in preferring insight and intuition,
  the engendering of refined spiritualized emotions
  rather than reason and logic.
• Ambiguity allows each viewer to proceed to their
  capacity for nuance.

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shibui

• Ascerbic good taste astringency.
• Simple, unadorned, subtle, hidden, beauty
• The taste of umeboshi

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wabi-sabi objects
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ki-sho-ten-ketsu????

• Literary composition principle
• Reader-centred, opposed to Western
  writer-centred esp. Modernism, James Joyce,
  Virginia Woolf, etc.
• KI opening, beginning
• SHO continuing
• TEN turning away (change)
• KETSU binding together.

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Japanese Religious-Æsthetic Concepts

• Shichi-Go-San 7-5-3 Celebrate a child's 3rd,
  5th 7th birthdays, and a deceaseds 3rd, 5th
  7th anniversaries.
• Haiku is 5-7-5 syllables
• rock-gardens have odd-numbered - arrangements of
  stones
• Numbers 4 and 9 are shunned
• 4 can be shi meaning death.
• 9 can be ku meaning suffering

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Japanese Religious-Æsthetic Concepts

• Ten-Chi-Jin heaven-earth-man
• a sense of something high, something low. and an
  intermediary the axes are spacial, temporal and
  human. The middle concept is (explicit in the
  configuration of the Noh stage) a bridge.

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Japanese Religious-Æsthetic Concepts

• Shin-Gyo-So (true, moving grass-like.)
• In calligraphy, block-style, kana cursive in
  the cha-no-yu, of its implements, formal,
  semi-formal, informal. Shin-gyo-so is an
  effective schema for mapping the uniquely
  Japanese manner of reacting to any discrete new
  foreign encounter. Evident in literature in
  comparative representations, structural contrasts
  and developments in character

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Japanese Religious-Æsthetic Concepts

• Jo-Ha-Kyu (gathering, break, urgent action)
• A concept exemplified by -- likely originating
  in contemplation of -- the waterfall. In
  literature -- notably haiku -- it signifies
  introduction, development, action. In music, it
  has several compounding applications, essentially
  a triptych of increasing rapidity climax. This
  is accepted as the natural rhythm -- gestation,
  birth, life is just one obvious universal triad/

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Japanese Religious-Æsthetic Concepts

• Shu-Ha-Ri (keep the form, lose the form, no form)
• the process by which mastery of any art or
  practice is attained.
• copy and practice the fundamental forms
• Steadily lose reliance on use of fundamental form
• Achieve mastery where the art is natural,
  personal, and subconscious (mushin)
• applies to the arts (e.g. calligraphy,
  literature, painting), professions, martial arts,
  sport, etc.