by Hayden Foldhazy, Philosopher
There is a definitive relationship between the content of Japanese arts and the aesthetic principle of mono no aware (sensitivity to ephemera, 物の哀れ), which came to be formally recognized amongst the people – as an actual facet of said arts – shortly after literati Motoori Norinaga’s analysis of Genji no Monogatari was published. It is only in his shorter essay however, titled On Mono no Aware, that Norinaga provides a clearer image of what exactly a feeling of mono no aware entails, its origins, and how it is used in the creation of song (uta, 歌 or 詩). Here we will begin with the linguistic origins of the term as it will be easier to map the ways in which it has transformed in use and meaning, moreover to better understand its context and content in modern songs.
Thus, we turn our attention first to aware’s translation in earlier literature as an expression of sighing; like the English ah! or oh! Interestingly though, Norinaga makes no claims on whether this expression was ever used outside literature – in spoken language – as we often do in Western tongues to convey our displeasure or comfort directly. The sigh of relief is the best example I can think of, when one sits down after a long day and utters that customary breath of solace. Or perhaps for a more aesthetically derived sensation, when one gasps at a view of nature or painting in awe. He merely refers to it as a word that would express this action of sighing in song, which suggests otherwise; and I only bring this up because I am not – from my own experiences – familiar with anyone who uses the term aware colloquially [B 174]. Rather, Japanese speakers usually reply with a simple aa (ああ) or softer haa (はあ) when met with external pains or pleasure, which brings us to our next point. Though aware is, to this day, most often written as 哀れ, using the kanji for sorrow (哀), Norinaga emphasizes that aware is not a feeling of mere sadness; nor is it on the other hand one of mere happiness when written as 柯怜, using the kanji for compassion. Aware is an all encompassing term that articulates a broad range of feelings, but does so at a deep and most sympathetic level from within oneself. And so, when he explains what it means to know mono no aware it becomes clear why we are so concerned with songs and especially why there is no mono no aware without consideration for emotions of the heart (kokoro, 心).
To know mono no aware is, on its surface level, a recognition of this action of sighing; what Norinaga describes as our fundamental “understanding of the nature of these things, and know[ing] how to be moved by them,” [B 173]. These things he mentions are where the mono (thing, 物) in the phrase mono no aware come from; where mono explicitly refers to objects of the external world – tangible things and never their ideas. So, if we take the two parts of the phrase in unison we literally have something that means the ah! (aware) of (no) things (mono). We see here as well why the phrase is so often translated into English as a sensitivity to ephemera, because the objects which bring about this ah! are only temporary. They are fleeting moments, rising and falling from the things our thoughts and emotions are derived – but we will return to this briefly when discussing particular songs. The feeling exhibited by mono no aware is hence best summarized as one where we experience and identify a deep awe in a particular something – ie., anything, whether it be the moon or a facile teacup. Norinaga makes it clear that all mono are capable of this and act on us involuntarily. But what is it that he really means when he says to know how to be moved by them? It would seem simply acknowledging our sighing is not enough then, and that something else is inexplicably involved. We have haphazardly thrown the term understanding about till now, implying at the very least that there is a process of learning attached to this aesthetic, and so I will attempt from here to interpret what this understanding consists of.
Norinaga’s explanation is – ironically – a bit shallow. However what he alludes to in his introduction, when explaining the difference between man and animal, is that consciousness of one’s feelings is necessary for the aesthetic experience to occur; not just the action itself. Circling back to the heart (kokoro, 心) I mentioned previously, Norinaga claims that all living creatures possess one unquestionably – going so far as to state that they too are capable of song – but only man is in possession of a deeply moving heart, due to their superior ability to perform actions and also reflect on them. Moreover, he explains this quality of depth in terms of our greater exposure to actions which I interpret as our conducts, or functions, which assail the basic animalistic ones of survival. Consequently, only man can realize, ie., actualize, this aesthetic in a manner of self expression [B 172]. We are after all beings that think about thinking itself, making us more intimately aware of our situation. And so, when met with the external things we can act upon, the reflection of our actions – ie., the thinking thinking – causes our hearts to move with sentiment far more than any other creature, to the point we can not withhold the feeling within ourselves any longer. Ergo we sigh. The understanding, or the how, is therefore this very consciousness of the emotional response exhibited toward the object in question. We do not just sigh and move on from our sentiment, but relish in it until the sentiment itself moves from us; we watch the object – the thing – perish before us and in this find what beauty is. Thus to fully know mono no aware, in chorus one must be aware of the movement their feelings undergo, the thing that is causing this movement, and why the thing is causing this to occur. Perhaps from here it would be best to analyze how mono no aware comes about in song: what Norinaga asserts to be the realized, human expression of this sentiment.
From his own Suzunoya Shū, we consider the song Insects in front of the moon:
Mushi no ne ka (Is it the sound of the insects?)
Izure ni otsuru (Where are these tears)
Aware to mo (From a deep sentiment falling — )
Namida wakarenu (That never leave)
Aki no yo no tsuki (The moon on an autumn night?) [B 96]
The second and third lines are explicative of the songwriter’s emotions, the first condition we proposed of knowing mono no aware; awareness of one’s sentiment as related to the object at hand. There is a melancholic feeling expressed by the mention of tears that progresses into a chasmic, inexhaustibleness of their presence in the fourth line: tears that never leave. These words in particular suggest mono no aware to be a perpetual condition of man – thanks to their deeply moving heart – to always be in or affected by emotion; in this case one of woe. The first and fifth lines are offered as questions to satisfy the second and third conditions; to identify and inquire of the things causing our feeling, or our heart to move. Here these things are the sound of the insects and the moon respectively. We see once again that the mono under discussion are experienceable, tangible things that can always be reconciled with an action. As such, aware is often used in direct conjunction with verbs to relay this explicitly – something lacking in this song. Nevertheless, it is still implied in this instance by the sound of the insects, requiring us to listen, and the presence of the autumn moon, requiring us to see. We can surmise this better from the following phrases Norinaga provides in his analytical essay: tsuki wo aware to iu (sighing over the moon) and hito wo aware to iu (to be moved by someone[‘s words]), where aware to iu is a sighing (aware) accompanied by speaking (iu). Returning to the mono of this song, Insects in front of the moon, we emphasize again that the things responsible for our emotion are only temporary, like the seasons. The insects do not sing forever, being a conventional symbol of the summer, and the autumn moon will only appear in its respective months; yet an appreciation for them and all their beauty spawns from this finitude.
In modern poetry especially, mono no aware presents itself this way thematically; in metaphors for transience, almost always in relation to the passing of the seasons and their things. Consider the first two stanzas from Nakahara Chūya’s Summer Night:
Ah, in my tired heart
a cherry-pink woman passes by,
a woman passes by.
In the summer night the paddy field’s sledge,
resentment has faded away.
— Will the surrounding mountains’ seasons come round? [A 55]
The song begins with an ah but it is not for me to say if this ah would be translated directly as something like aware to mo. We can still infer however that there is a sighing action taking place here, signified by a tired heart. It is accompanied by this symbolic passing of spring through the cherry-pink woman; representative of the cherry blossoms which come and pass in the April to May months marking summer’s approach – hence the next stanza beginning with a summer’s night. Cherry blossoms are synonymous with beauty in Japan because of their short-viewed presence and cyclical nature – of birth and death, not unlike our own movement through life. Transience is reflected in almost every line of this song, but the emotion developed from this temporariness of things is best found in the fifth and final stanza:
In my tired heart, a petal passes by;
from time to time a gong grazes the writings.
The mist is lovely, but hot! [A 55]
The last line specifically emphasizes this bittersweetness partnered with the very passage of time. Moreover, in the prior line – similar to Norinaga – we also see this allusion to mono no aware’s incessant presence in man; as a gong which sounds from time to time, sparking what seems to be Chūya’s writings themselves: uta. Norinaga’s claim that song is the actualized knowing of mono no aware shines through here; as we are met with an overwhelming nostalgia – a lovely but hot mist – in response to the subtleties of living – time’s movement across things – that we must outwardly articulate.
It is not completely dissimilar in form from Western poetry, where poets seek to articulate emotion in writing. Except, the latter’s tendency to project feelings into objects – and not vice versa, where objects project feelings onto us involuntarily – drastically changes the content away from mono no aware. In the case of Chūya, we see that an experience of witnessing the passage of time has caused the melancholic response to this summer night. But in Western poetry we often see an already present feeling be signaled metaphorically by something that could occur, usually through imagery. Take for instance William Blake’s Ah! Sun-flower:
Ah Sun-flower! weary of time,
Who countest the steps of the Sun:
Seeking after that sweet golden clime
Where the travellers journey is done.
Where the Youth pined away with desire,
And the pale Virgin shrouded in snow:
Arises from their graves and aspire,
Where my Sun-flower wishes to go.
I chose this poem in particular, not only because it uses this ah! similar to our other songs, but because it uses nature – important in Japanese songs of aware – as an allusion for man. It is not even subtle, as the sun-flower is itself personified, being able to count the Sun’s steps – the days passing by – and wishing to go where the Youth and pale Virgin find themselves – presumably Heaven, after death. Here, feelings are contrarily idealized into the things rather than subjectively impressed by judgements offered of the things as in the case of Chūya or Norinaga. This is not to say Blake was not inspired by the viewing of a sun-flower to write this poem, but because the sun-flower is meant – in the context of the last line – to articulate its own feelings we are dealing with a more objective, outwardly-positioned scrutinization of life and beauty; ie., a judgment from outside the thing as it is. Beauty and hope for a peaceful death are positioned into the sun-flower rather than being found within it. There are of course many similarities to be encountered here too; mostly in regards to the poem’s apprehension of time and our own finitude. The weary sun-flower that tracks every day as it passes, accepting its eventual demise exhibits something close to the person who experiences aware’s appreciation for fleetingness; but again, the position – the sentiment – is one that is offered by us through an image of an object: the sun-flower.
In short summary then, mono no aware is not unlike a direct expression of yūgen, which seeks to turn this action of sighing at the underlying sentiment of things into singing (utatte, 歌って) about beauty as it is. And though these feelings spring onto us involuntarily from the objects themselves, we are able to comprehend them subjectively via their accompaniment to our specific actions; such as watching the rain (ame wo aware to mite iru, 雨を哀れと見ている). Thus, it would seem the most important qualities of mono no aware are its derivation from the surrounding world as well as its recognition of beauty in finitude; very different from the traditional Western aesthetic which emphasizes beauty as ideal, permanent structures. In modern Japanese songs we have also seen how this aesthetic has continued, almost always in the songs’ contents, whereas traditional lyrics – from the likes of Norinaga – articulated this aware in the very form of the language. Today, in a contemporary Japan that moves further and further from the traditional values of its ancestors each generation, we still see this sentiment for the impermeant – perhaps, ironically, this is why the landscape is so open to change and progresses with ease into a modern world, as nostalgia is felt, allowed to pass, and not contrived. The people still practice hanami (flower-viewing parties of the cherry blossoms, 花見) and yet welcome new developments to the tradition as needed. Mono no aware has consequently become more than a literary phrase in poetics; it has become an aesthetic of living.
Notes
AChūya, Nakahara. The Poems of Nakahara Chūya. Translated by Maki Sugiyama and Paul Mackintosh, Gracewing Publishing, 2017.
BMotoori, Norinaga. The Poetics of Motoori Norinaga: A Hermeneutical Journey. Translated by Michael F. Marra, University of Hawaii Press, 2007.
CBlake, William. Ah! Sun-flower. 1794.
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