THE THEORY OF BEAUTY IN THE CLASSICAL AESTHETICS OF JAPAN

THE THEORY OF BEAUTY IN THE CLASSICAL AESTHETICS OF JAPAN

The series "Philosophy and World Community" appears under the auspices of the International Federation of Philosophical Societies and of the Conseil International de la Philosophie et des Sciences Humaines, with the support of Unesco. General Editor : RAYMOND KLIBANSKY President de la Commission des Textes de l'institut international de philosophie

INTERNATIONAL INSTITUTE OF PHILOSOPHY THE THEORY OF BEAUTY IN THE CLASSICAL AESTHETICS OF JAPAN by TOSHIHIKO and TOYO IZUTSU 1981 SPRINGER-SCIENCE+BUSINESS MEDIA, B.V.

This volume is Iisted in the Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data. ISBN 978-90-481-8261-9 ISBN 978-94-017-3481-3 (ebook) DOI 10.1007/978-94-017-3481-3 The cover shows a letter from the Noh thcoretician Zeami to another Noh mastcr. Zenchiku. Copyright 1981 by Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 1981 Originally published by Martinus Nijhoff Publishers bv, The Hague in 1981 Softcover reprint ofthe hardcover 1st edition 1981 AII rights reserved. No part ofthis publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission ofthe publisher, Springer-Science+Business Media. B. V.

CONTENTS Preface IX PART ONE: PRELIMINARY ESSAYS, by Toyo Izutsu I. The aesthetic structure of waka 3 1. The formal structure of waka 3 2. Waka as a poetic-linguistic 'field' 5 3. Kokoro, the creative Ground of waka 6 4. Kokoro, omoi and kotoba 9 5. The ideal waka, the 'excelling exemplar' 11 6. The rectification of kokoro 12 7. The significance of jo 12 8. The aesthetic value of yo-jo 14 9. The supremacy of yo-jo 15 10. The Mode of Ushin 16 11. The role of Nature-description in waka 17 12. Nature-description and yo-jo 19 13. Nature as a cognitive 'field' 21 24 II. The metaphysical background of the theory of Noh: an analysis of Zeami's 'Nine Stages' 26 1. The concept of yugen 26

VI 2. Subject-object relationship in the Japanese way of thinking 29 3. Dimension of being and dimension of Nothingness in Japanese thinking 30 4. The contemplative field 32 5. 'The Nine Stages' 35 44 III. The Way of tea: an art of spatial awareness 46 1. Preliminaries 46 2. Metaphysics of wabi 48 3. Spatial awareness and the creative subjectivity in the art of tea 55 61 IV. Haiku: an existential event 62 1. From waka to haiku 62 2. The hai-i or haiku spirit 64 3. The dynamics of the Subject-Object encounter 66 4. Fuga-no-makoto 69 5. Fueki (constancy) and ryako (transiency) 70 6. Yo-haku (blank space) and the poetic 'field' of haiku 73 75 PART TWO: TEXTS, translated by Toshihiko and Toyo lzutsu 77 I. Maigetsusho, by Fujiwara Teika II. 'The Nine Stages', by Zeami Motokiyo III. 'The Process of Training in the Nine Stages' (Appendix to 'The Nine Stages'), by Zeami Motokiyo 79 95 97 101

vii IV. 'Observations on the Disciplinary Way of Noh', by Zeami Motokiyo V. 'Collecting Gems and Obtaining Flowers', by Zeami Motokiyo VI. 'A Record of Nanba', by Nanba Sokei VII. 'The Red Booklet', by Doha Hattori 104 105 114 115 l34 l35 158 159 167

PREFACE The Japanese sense of beauty as actualized in innumerable works of art, both linguistic and non-linguistic, has often been spoken of as something strange to, and remote from, the Western taste. It is, in fact, so radically different from what in the West is ordinarily associated with aesthetic experience that it even tends to give an impression of being mysterious, enigmatic or esoteric. This state of affairs comes from the fact that there is a peculiar kind of metaphysics, based on a realization of the simultaneous semantic articulation of consciousness and the external reality, dominating the whole functional domain of the Japanese sense of beauty, without an understanding of which the so-called 'mystery' of Japanese aesthetics would remain incomprehensible. The present work primarily purports to clarify the keynotes of the artistic experiences that are typical of Japanese culture, in terms of a special philosophical structure underlying them. It consists of two main parts: (1) Preliminary Essays, in which the major philosophical ideas relating to beauty will be given a theoretical elucidation, and (2) a selection of Classical Texts representative of Japanese aesthetics in widely divergent fields of linguistic and extra-linguistic art such as the theories of waka-poetry, Noh play, the art of tea, and haiku. The second part is related to the first by way of a concrete illustration, providing as it does philological materials on which are based the philosophical considerations of the first part. Thus the book is so arranged that it might make a contribution towards a clear understanding of the Japanese sense of beauty, based on a special type of semantic articulation of reality, structurally

x comprising within itself, as an organic whole, the metaphysical, ethical, and aesthetic experiences of the Japanese. The idea of our writing this book initially came from Professor Raymond Klibansky while we were together at McGill University in Montreal, Canada, who kindly suggested to us that we should work on something of this sort. Following his suggestion we set out to work on it in 1973 and finished writing it in spring of 1977. In this sense the book owes its very existence to Professor Klibansky, to whom we are infinitely grateful. Thanks are also due to Professor E.T. Jessop who has taken the trouble of going through the manuscript for stylistic amelioration. No less are we grateful to Professor Alfred Ayer of Oxford for the warm interest he has shown in our work as well as to Professor Paul Ricoeur, President of the Institut International de Philosophie, who has officially promoted the publication of the present work under the auspices of the Institut and Unesco. TOYO IZUTSU and TOSHIHIKO IZUTSU 6 April 1980 Kamakura, Japan