, , and also translated as , or , is a Japanese idiom for the awareness of , or transience of things, and both a transient gentle sadness (or wistfulness) at their passing as well as a longer, deeper gentle sadness about this state being the reality of life.

Origins and analysis

The idiom comes from

Heian period The is the last division of classical Japanese history, running from 794 to 1185. It followed the Nara period, beginning when the 50th emperor, Emperor Kammu, moved the capital of Japan to Heian-kyō (modern Kyoto). means in Japanese. It is a ...

literature, but was picked up and used by 18th century

Edo period The , also known as the , is the period between 1600 or 1603 and 1868 in the history of Japan, when the country was under the rule of the Tokugawa shogunate and some 300 regional ''daimyo'', or feudal lords. Emerging from the chaos of the Sengok ...

Japanese cultural scholar

Motoori Norinaga was a Japanese people, Japanese scholar of active during the Edo period. He is conventionally ranked as one of the Four Great Men of Kokugaku (nativist) studies. Life Norinaga was born in what is now Matsusaka, Mie, Matsusaka in Ise Province ...

in his literary criticism of ''

The Tale of Genji is a classic work of Japanese literature written by the noblewoman, poet, and lady-in-waiting Murasaki Shikibu around the peak of the Heian period, in the early 11th century. It is one of history's first novels, the first by a woman to have wo ...

,'' and later to other germinal Japanese works including the . It became central to his philosophy of literature; he saw it as the main theme of ''The Tale of Genji''. His articulation was the result of well-established poetic readings of ''The Tale of Genji'' and the concept became central to his own; ''Genji'' was "instrumental" in the term's establishment. According to Norinaga, to "know" is to have a shrewd understanding and consideration of reality and the assortment of occurrences present; to be affected by and appreciate the beauty of cherry blossoms was an example of this knowledge provided by Norinaga. Japanese cultural scholar Kazumitsu Kato wrote that understanding in the Heian period was "almost a necessity for a learned man in aristocratic society", a time when it was a prominent concept.

Donald Richie Donald Richie (April 17, 1924 – February 19, 2013) was an American-born author who wrote about the Japanese people, the culture of Japan, and especially Japanese cinema. Although he considered himself primarily a film historian, Richie also ...

wrote that the term has "a near-Buddhistic insistence upon recognition of the eternal flux of life upon this earth. This is the authentic Japanese attitude toward death and disaster". Various other scholars have discussed the term.

Etymology

The phrase is derived from the Japanese word , which means , the particle , which means , and the word , which was a

expression of measured surprise (similar to or ), translating roughly as , , , , or . has seen multiple translations, such as and ; the Latin phrase has also been invoked. Due to the Buddhist influence in Japan, the expression has also seen connection to the Anicca, which is one of the three marks of existence in buddhism, representing impermanence. Awareness of the transience of all things heightens appreciation of their beauty, and evokes a gentle sadness at their passing. Norinaga saw the state of being as the fundamental condition of the concept. The term has seen gradual change in its meaning, although "from the beginning it represented a feeling of a special kind: 'not a powerful surge of passion, but an emotion containing a balance...'".

In contemporary culture

is "one of the most well-known concepts in traditional literary criticism in Japan".

Yasunari Kawabata was a Japanese novelist and short story writer whose spare, lyrical, subtly-shaded prose works won him the 1968 Nobel Prize in Literature, the first Japanese author to receive the award. His works have enjoyed broad international appeal and ...

was a considerable modern proponent of . Norinaga asserted that the feeling of may be so profound that allusions to

sense A sense is a biological system used by an organism for sensation, the process of gathering information about the surroundings through the detection of Stimulus (physiology), stimuli. Although, in some cultures, five human senses were traditio ...

s, highlighting "the sound of wind or crickets, ..the colour of flowers or snow", would be the only apt expression. Notable

manga are comics or graphic novels originating from Japan. Most manga conform to a style developed in Japan in the late 19th century, and the form has a long history in earlier Japanese art. The term is used in Japan to refer to both comics ...

artists who use -style storytelling include Hitoshi Ashinano, Kozue Amano, and Kaoru Mori. In

anime is a Traditional animation, hand-drawn and computer animation, computer-generated animation originating from Japan. Outside Japan and in English, ''anime'' refers specifically to animation produced in Japan. However, , in Japan and in Ja ...

, both '' Only Yesterday'' by Isao Takahata and '' Mai Mai Miracle'' by Sunao Katabuchi emphasize the passing of time in gentle notes and by presenting the main plot against a parallel one from the past. By the 1970s, had been adopted in Japanese and English film criticism with noted attention towards the Japanese director

Yasujirō Ozu was a Japanese filmmaker. He began his career during the era of silent films, and his last films were made in colour in the early 1960s. Ozu first made a number of short comedies, before turning to more serious themes in the 1930s. The most pr ...

. Ozu was well known for creating a sense of , frequently climaxing with a character very understatedly saying , after a familial and societal

paradigm shift A paradigm shift is a fundamental change in the basic concepts and experimental practices of a scientific discipline. It is a concept in the philosophy of science that was introduced and brought into the common lexicon by the American physicist a ...

, such as a daughter being married off, against the backdrop of a swiftly changing Japan. Ozu has often expressed feelings by showing the faces of objects rather than the face of an actor. Some examples include two fathers contemplating the rocks in a "dry landscape" garden, and a mirror reflecting the absence of the daughter who has just left home after getting married.

Science fiction Science fiction (often shortened to sci-fi or abbreviated SF) is a genre of speculative fiction that deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts. These concepts may include information technology and robotics, biological manipulations, space ...

author Ken Liu's short story won the 2013

Hugo Award for Best Short Story The Hugo Award for Best Short Story is one of the Hugo Awards given each year for science fiction or fantasy stories published or translated into English during the previous calendar year. The short story award is available for works of fiction of ...

. Inspired by works like the science fiction manga , Liu sought to evoke an "aesthetic primarily oriented towards creating in the reader an empathy towards the inevitable passing of all things", and to acknowledge "the importance of memory and continuity with the past".

Akira Kurosawa was a Japanese filmmaker who List of works by Akira Kurosawa, directed 30 feature films in a career spanning six decades. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest and most influential filmmakers in the History of film, history of cinema ...

's '' I Live in Fear'' and Shohei Imamura's '' Black Rain'' have been associated with the term. In Mike Carey's Rampart Trilogy, "Monono Aware" is the pseudonym of a Japanese pop star whose personality and memories are licensed as content for the

Sony is a Japanese multinational conglomerate (company), conglomerate headquartered at Sony City in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. The Sony Group encompasses various businesses, including Sony Corporation (electronics), Sony Semiconductor Solutions (i ...

DreamSleeve, an AI-enhanced music player released before the fall of human civilization.

Notes

References

External links

* from a Japanese culture class at

Ohio State University The Ohio State University (Ohio State or OSU) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Columbus, Ohio, United States. A member of the University System of Ohio, it was founded in 1870. It is one ...