Japanese Aesthetics

[1exist]

While a more proper place for this thread would, in some respects, be OoTw, I feel that because this forum is so underused (and because my query relates specifically to Japan), here is as good a place as any to put it. I'm looking for an in depth and accurate primer on Japanese aesthetic concepts such as wabi, sabi, aware, and yugen. I've read conflicting definitions of these words, especially the first two, and I can't seem to find a trustworthy looking article that goes into detail about any of them.

A search on Barnes and Noble abounded with books that had "Wabi-Sabi" in the title, but many seemed like they might be commercializations and overgeneralizations for a dumb American audience. Any help would be vastly appreciated, as I'm eager to understand the true nature of these concepts.

[Ellimist]

I am sorry this is not what you want, but I thought this thread was appropriate.

I just had to reinstall Windows XP and one of the first things I did after getting online was rush to the Microsoft Languages site to install the Japanese support files. I could not stand seeing those 4 or 5 question marks in the middle of the forum index. It was very odd.

[katatonic]

Ellimist, how do you spell OCD? :D

[Ellimist]

Ellimist, how do you spell OCD? :D
O-B-S-E-S-S-Q-I.... fuck!

gets out the bleach Look what you made me do! Now I have to clean it up. Shit, I have to go wash my hands.

Edit: back now. okay, trying again:

O-B-S-E-S-S-I-V-E- -C-O-M-P-U-L-S-I-V-E- -D-I-S-O-R-D-E-R

Ah, much better. :)

I can make fun of this stuff because I probably do have some minor form of it. I could be wrong, of course.

[katatonic]

:lol:
You make me happy.

[corndog]

sniff, sniff


*lifts leg*
________
Honda J engine (http://www.honda-wiki.org/wiki/Honda_J_engine)

[modiFIed]

What the hell are you doing over here, Corndog? KENNEL!

By the way, I don't suppose you'll reveal who you are? It's a bit weird seeing my dog in your avatar, whoever you are.

[corndog]

What the hell are you doing over here, Corndog? KENNEL!



Can't a dog have some privacy to do her business?



By the way, I don't suppose you'll reveal who you are?


What! And spoil the fun? I think I can get at least a couple more jokes out of this first. You can have 3 guesses, and I'll bet you don't figure it out.



It's a bit weird seeing my dog in your avatar, whoever you are.

Sorry about that. It's such a great shot of me though. But I'll give it back - here-

http://i14.photobucket.com/albums/a346/znorker/em2.jpg

and use one of my own, much cruder likenesses.
________
medical marijuana (http://mmjp.org)

[corndog]

What does a Japanese dog's bark sound like anyway?
________
Yamaha CS30/CS30L synthesizer specifications (http://www.yamaha-tech.com/wiki/Yamaha_CS30/CS30L_synthesizer)

[MoleculaRR]

To return this thread to it's original query (sorry corndog, now my name will appear on the index page :evil:), I too am curious about the notion of Japanese aesthetics and how they might apply (or not) to HoL. I had to return my library's loaned copy of the Japanese translation, but I've got another one on order.

What I'm curious about is why, as seems to be the case, the book hasn't really caught on over there? A quick perusal of Japanese horror films seems to support the observation that the idea of threatening, uncanny, or otherwise problematic home-spaces is pretty common. Dark Water and Ju-on come to mind, obviously, but even something like Ringu where the supernatural isn't explicitly space-specific employs a subtle use of home-spaces that is especially unnerving. A few scenes come to mind, but if you've seen it you know what I'm talking about.

Anyway, HoL does seem especially "American" in some ways (though it certainly doesn't exclude a European sensibility, one could argue that the sense in which space is "haunted" in TNR is somehow different than what would find if it were set in, say, London; but that's not what I want to talk about here.)

I'm interested in hearing anyone's thoughts (particularly anyone who has recently lived in Japan) on the ways Japanese culture and/or aesthetic sensibilities might (or might not) relate to the fundamental aporia present both in the novel and the film.

[boot4541]

Ellimist, how do you spell OCD?

I guess that you must of been abducted lat night or something cos your definatly are not thinking straight.

[zakalwe]

I'm interested in hearing anyone's thoughts (particularly anyone who has recently lived in Japan) on the ways Japanese culture and/or aesthetic sensibilities might (or might not) relate to the fundamental aporia present both in the novel and the film.

-This (http://professordvd.typepad.com/my_weblog/2005/05/a_copy_of_a_cop.html) Digital Poetics post seems right up your street- doesn't answer your initial query, but is about digital/analogue reproduction, Ringu, HoL etc.

-It is impossible for Japanese people to fear an infinitely vast house. On the contrary, from personal experience I can attest that many would consider it a dream home. Hence HoL's poor sales.

-Why not use this part of the forum? I don't think we've had a single japanese poster so far, although potentials may well be put off by the lack of nihongo on display.

-I'll attempt a less facetious answer to your interesting question once I've had a think about it.

[MoleculaRR]

Right on. In the meantime, though, I should mention that one of my favorite bits of Ringu (I've only seen the Japanese film version) was when they try to decipher the text on the tape but they can't read it because it moves and changes, etc. Very much in line with the comments you point to on Digital Poetics.

This is a tremendous generalization, but is it also possible that typographic play, multiple text vectors, etc. isn't quite as novel to a Japanese audience? I don't know the language well enough to say for sure, but my impression of the little conversational Japanese I learned was that you get used to reading it both left->right and top->bottom and that syntax in general is more of a matter of context and association than delineation. I dunno, though. I really don't know what I"m talking about here.

[zakalwe]

No worries- I've been geeking to chat about this for a while.


I don't know the language well enough to say for sure, but my impression of the little conversational Japanese I learned was that you get used to reading it both left->right and top->bottom and that syntax in general is more of a matter of context and association than delineation.

Yeah- and I suppose the art of calligraphy, where the beauty is in the placement, shape, choice etc of the kanji equally might prepare a Japanese reader more for the kinds of typographic play in HoL. But then we're hardly bereft of a similar tradition (need I drag out my hobby horse?)... In this debate, I feel like we are two men with a biro each and some string tied on the end, fishing for blue whales. If you see what mean.

but let's see where it goes.

[MoleculaRR]

In this debate, I feel like we are two men with a biro each and some string tied on the end, fishing for blue whales. If you see what mean.

but let's see where it goes.

Er, biro = "ballpoint pen (http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=biro)"? That's a new one for me, but I take your point nonetheless. Calligraphy's a good tie-in, too. My point basically was that there's a different kind of graphemic conciousness already present in japanese writing.

[katatonic]

Ellimist, how do you spell OCD?

I guess that you must of been abducted lat night or something cos your definatly are not thinking straight.

I guess you must just be fucking stupid.

[John B.]

No worries- I've been geeking to chat about this for a while.


I don't know the language well enough to say for sure, but my impression of the little conversational Japanese I learned was that you get used to reading it both left->right and top->bottom and that syntax in general is more of a matter of context and association than delineation.

Yeah- and I suppose the art of calligraphy, where the beauty is in the placement, shape, choice etc of the kanji equally might prepare a Japanese reader more for the kinds of typographic play in HoL. But then we're hardly bereft of a similar tradition (need I drag out my hobby horse?)... In this debate, I feel like we are two men with a biro each and some string tied on the end, fishing for blue whales. If you see what mean.

but let's see where it goes.

I know next to nothing of a scholarly nature about this matter, but what the hey? Let's see where it goes, indeed. Besides: I'm in the mood for trying to resurrect an old thread or two.

A couple of years ago I visited the U. of Kansas' art museum, which has a large collection of Japanese pieces. As to its quality, I can't say, but easily the most striking piece there was a banner-like piece (about 2' wide and 7' long, hanging long-ways down) that has one large character that completely dominates the top center of the banner. Other columns of characters flank it on either side, extending past it.

There's something about it that made me think that, yes, the central character is important, but so also is the space around it. Given my absolute ignorance of the Japanese language, its ideographs might as well be by Franz Kline. I know intellectually that they signify, but I respond to them as pictorial elements rather than as text. So their size and placement is something I wonder about in the same way that I wonder about the size and placement of images in, say, a landscape painting. Given that consideration, the space around them signifies as well, seeing as the characters give shape to what isn't occupied by them. Pace, Zakalwe--and I am probably wrong about this--but it seems to me that, given the nature of English, most unconventional placement of text on a page doesn't really do much more than make the reader say, "Oh--there's an unconventional placement of words on the page." We look more closely at the WORD, though: the space around it (still) is the blank page. Even enlarging the word doesn't change this (for me) in any essential way.

But having said all that: HoL IS different in this regard: having, for example, text that begins in the upper-left corner of the page and then run diagonally across the page makes me wonder about the space as much as the (accretion of) words that give shape to that space.

That's all I can manage for today. More later, I hope.

[zakalwe]

Right, John- we don't to my knowledge quite have an equivalent tradition of calligraphy as high art, where placement, brush-stroke technique and texture etc all contribute to the overall impression . Perhaps the placement of letters, and the consideration of 'where the letters are not' , could signify more in a logographic language than in, say, English. It's also interesting, if slightly irrelevant to the present conversation, to note the following- cribbed from that bastion of internet reliability, wiki-wiki-wild-wild-pedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calligraphy):


Instead of recalling something related to the reality of the spoken word, calligraphy for Muslims is a visible expression of the highest art of all, the art of the spiritual world. Calligraphy has arguably become the most venerated form of Islamic art because it provides a link between the languages of the Muslims with the religion of Islam.

[John B.]

Right, John- we don't to my knowledge quite have an equivalent tradition of calligraphy as high art, where placement, brush-stroke technique and texture etc all contribute to the overall impression . Perhaps the placement of letters, and the consideration of 'where the letters are not' , could signify more in a logographic language than in, say, English.

Well, the nearest thing I can think of is the tradition of illuminated manuscripts, such as the Book of Kells. Here's a close-up of a typical image.

http://www.ub.ntnu.no/formidl/utgivelser/til_opplysning/to_nr8_bilder/p6.jpg

But this sort of thing still seems fundamentally different from what's going on in Japanese calligraphy.

More recently, John Cage's book M (http://www.powells.com/biblio/74-0819560359-0#product_details) is a collection of experiments with the I Ching and different typefaces and -sizes--the chance element of the I Ching, not the author's desires, produce the results on the page, which are clearly as much visual in their effect as they are anything else.

And, sort-of-on-topic-sort-of-off: Have a look at this (http://www.booktrader.dk/alfabet.html).

[fearful_syzygy]

There's an English version of that page here (http://www.booktrader.dk/alphabet.html), which also helpfully provides a translation of the title of Georg Oldskov's short story collection.

[Raminagrobis]

I love that! They should have found a place for Luther Blisset's <i>Q</i>, though. Definitely the best one-letter-titled novel I've read. (Although Perec's <i>W</i> is pretty good too; I also have a copy of John Berger's <i>G</i> on my shelf, but I haven't got around to reading it yet.)

[Nail Bane]

Ellimist, how do you spell OCD? :D
I could take offense to that.

[zakalwe]

You could take offense at a light-hearted joke directed at someone else and apparently received in good faith by the target? You will do well here, I'm sure.

[katatonic]

Haha!
Nail Bane, if you "could" take offense to that, please do. Then shut up and go away.