Aesthetics in Asia

Japanese aesthetics is unique among non-Western traditions in the degree to which it has permeated international awareness. It did this not only through the arts but also by introducing its extensive aesthetic vocabulary—wabi (a taste for the simple), sabi (quiet simplicity), shibui (subdued), iki (stylish, elegant), yugen (rich or deep beauty), etc. (for explanations, see Miner et al., pt. 4). Saito has reinterpreted sabi and wabi in terms of an "aesthetics of insufficiency." This vocabulary has often been interpreted as referring to an "eternal" Japanese spirit, but in fact it has undergone continuous expansion and reinterpretation since medieval times. The political uses served by both the aesthetics and their mythologizing interpretations comprises an important part of Japanese aesthetics in the early twenty-first century. Saito, for instance, reinterprets sabi and wabi in terms of an "aesthetics of insufficiency." Perhaps the most important area of current Japanese aesthetics develops the implications of the experience of being bombed and its aftermath(s), which seems to demand utterly new ways of "understanding."

Several dichotomies are used to organize thinking about the arts in Japan, including the polarities between feminine and masculine, and between native and foreign (originally Chinese; since 1868, American or Western). The earliest Japanese writing on aesthetics, by Kukai (774–835), was deliberately permeated by Chinese Buddhist philosophy. But a native Shinto aesthetic was evident a century earlier in the Manyoshu (Collection of ten thousand leaves), an anthology of folk songs and poems. Within the anthology, poems by Kakinomoto no Hitomaro (c. 658–c. 708) exemplify a Shinto aesthetic in which there is a "total unity of world and people, time and nature, public and private motivations" (Miner et al., p. 176). Concern over what constitutes as Shinto or native aesthetic, often phrased in terms of what is "uniquely Japanese," continues through Kamo no Mabuchi (1697–1769) and Motoori Norinaga (1730–1801) to the novelists Tanizaki Jun'ichiro and Kawabata Kasunari in the twentieth century, and Emiko Ohunki-Tierney in the twenty-first.

The single most influential figure in the history of Japanese aesthetics (according to Japanese specialists from the twelfth century on) was undoubtedly the Heian poet and diarist Murasaki Shikibu (c. 973–c. 1014). Her explications of the philosophy of literature and painting in her novel The Tale of Genji became famous (Tsunoda, vol. 1, pp. 176–179). Genji discusses the aesthetics of gardens, calligraphy, nature (especially the moon and the seasons), paper and wrapping, incense, color, fashion, and music; it presents the aesthetic concepts miyabi (courtly elegance) and mono no aware (awareness of the pathos of things). It exemplifies quintessential Japanese values including the "aesthetics of indirection," ambiguity, elusiveness, allusion and it developed Buddhist impermanence into an aesthetic virtue.

Subsequent critics extolled Genji. An ability to comment intelligently on it became necessary for establishing cultural credentials, although as a woman Murasaki also provoked anxiety. The literary and national-learning scholar Motoori Norinaga (1730–1801) developed the political and social dimensions of the expression frequently found in Genji of "the pathos of things" (mono no aware) and identified it as fundamental to Japanese culture and national identity (Miner, pp. 95–96; Nishimura). Heian women writers possessed a distinctive sensibility because they wrote in the vernacular rather than Chinese as men did; this allowed them to create their work within a native aesthetic distinct from that of male writers writing in Chinese (Keene).

Murasaki's contemporary Sei Shonagon (b. c. 967) presented an aesthetics of everyday life (as well as discoursing on more standard topics) in her Pillow Book, one of the three great "prose miscellanies" (zuihitsu). Her format was used by other medieval aesthetic recluses, notably Kamo no Chomei (1153–1216), waka poet and man of letters. His Hojoki (Account of my hut) displays an aesthetic distance that typifies this genre.

Fujiwara Shunzei (1114–1204) and Fujiwara Teika (1162–1241)—father and son poets, critics, and anthologists—devised new conceptions of literature and were the first to discern a history of poetry in Japan (Miner et al.). They assessed such matters as the temporalities of The Tale of Genji and ways of handling allusion. Shunzei advocated the aesthetic concepts yugen and sabi, relating them to Buddhist and Shinto values, and outlined a theory of effect in poetry that utilizes the poem's general configuration (sugata), diction (kotoba), and spirit (kokoro). Teika also wrote instructions to inspire poets.

Saigyo (1118–1190), a poet from a warrior family who became a Shingon priest, wrote a travel diary, a collection with poems on war, and another with poems on Yoshino's cherry blossoms that "assisted in the gradual shift from the plum to the cherry as the ideal Japanese flower" (Miner et al., p. 223). He helped popularize the aesthetic recluse's ideal of seclusion from the world, poetry, and travel. Matsuo Basho (1644–1695)—poet, critic, diarist, and traveler—brought the lowly and the commonplace into the subject matter and vocabulary for poetry and introduced new elements of humor (Tsunoda).

In theater, Zeami (1363–1443), playwright and theater critic, established a critical vocabulary and aesthetics for No: yugen, monomane (imitation), ka or hana (flower)—an allusion both to the transmission of his father's art and to the traditional aesthetics of Japanese poetry. Chikamatsu Monzaemon (1653–1725), a puppet-theater playwright whose works were adapted for the Kabuki stage, addressed the problem of realism in theater (Tsunoda). Kabuki (like most Asian theater) aims at presentation of an explicitly theatrical reality, unlike Western theater, which aims at representation of everyday life.

Tea ceremony aesthetics of simplicity and austerity creates an appreciation of the ordinary and alternative modes of sociality. Based on Zen, it introduces mindfulness into everyday life.

Several genres of gardens developed distinct aesthetics, specializing in allusion and reference (katsura); Zen-like mindfulness, simplicity and austerity, and/or relationships to nature, especially to the seasons, to natural landscape.

By the early twentieth century novelists such as Natsume Soseki, Tanizaki Junichiro, and Kawabata Yasunari explored through fiction ideas from Western aesthetics, such as Kant's disinterest. Akutagawa's famous short story "The Hell Screen" (1973) is an instantiation—and an exploration of the ramifications for human life—of the view that realism must be based on experience; the artist can only paint what he or she knows.