is a

Japan Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean off the northeast coast of the Asia, Asian mainland, it is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan and extends from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea ...

ese concept of

negative space In art and design, negative space or negative volume is the empty space around and between the subject(s) of an image. In graphic design this is known as white space. Negative space may be most evident when the space around a subject, not th ...

, and a Japanese reading of the Sino-Japanese character .

''Ma'' in Japanese culture

In modern interpretations of traditional Japanese arts and culture, is an artistic interpretation of an empty space, often holding as much importance as the rest of an artwork and focusing the viewer on the intention of negative space in an art piece. The concept of space as a positive entity is opposed to the absence of such a principle in a correlated "Japanese" notion of space. Though commonly used to refer to literal, visible negative space, may also refer to the perception of a space, gap or interval, without necessarily requiring a physical compositional element. This results in the concept of being less reliant on the existence of a gap, and more closely related to the perception of a gap. The existence of in an artwork has been interpreted as "an emptiness full of possibilities, like a promise yet to be fulfilled", and has been described as "the silence between the notes which make the music".

In arts and crafts

The alcove in a traditional Japanese room is a space or a stage used to display important objects, such as a painting scroll, an important art object, or a flower arrangement. The concept is also associated with or the Japanese spatial concept of "inwardness". In , the space around the flowers is considered to be equally as important as the flowers and plants themselves, with harmony and balance between the two considered the ideal. In

karate (; ; Okinawan language, Okinawan pronunciation: ), also , is a martial arts, martial art developed in the Ryukyu Kingdom. It developed from the Okinawan martial arts, indigenous Ryukyuan martial arts (called , "hand"; ''tī'' in Okinawan) un ...

, refers to the distance between two fighters. Knowing the safe distance between oneself and an opponent based on their reach is considered "understanding ".

Etymology

Among English loanwords of Japanese origin, both (interval, space) and (unit of architectural measurement) are written with the Chinese character derived from the character ("door") and ("sun"). Originally, the character was written with the radical for "moon" () instead of the character for "sun" (), and, in this form (, ), depicted, according to

Bernhard Karlgren Klas Bernhard Johannes Karlgren (; 15 October 1889 – 20 October 1978) was a Swedish sinologist and linguist who pioneered the study of Chinese historical phonology using modern comparative methods. In the early 20th century, Karlgren conduct ...

, "A door through the crevice of which the moonshine peeps in". The character can be read differently when emphasis is put on the connection between things (), the distance between things (), or the distance between people ().

''Ma'' in the West

In his 2001 book, ''The Art of Looking Sideways'', graphic designer Alan Fletcher discussed the importance that perceived negative space could hold in art: Derrick de Kerckhove described as "the complex network of relationships between people and objects".

References

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