A Brief Introduction To Japanese Culture (Part 3)

If we are going to discuss Japanese religion — as we did in Part Two) — we must also take a look at Zen Buddhism and its huge impact on Japanese culture. 

Buddhism, a religion beginning in India, began in a philosophical form, Theravadan Buddhism). It later branched into its Mahayana (religious) and Vajrayana (mystical) forms, with the Mahayana (the “Great Vehicle”) Buddhists pejoratively referring to the original Thervadan form as Hinayana,  the “Lesser Vehicle.”

A particular Mahayana form focusing on meditation (dhyana) arrived in China where it evolved into “Ch’an” Buddhism, and thus spread to the Korean Peninsula becoming known as “Son” Buddhism. It finally came to Japan and became known to the world as Zen, the Japanese method of pronouncing the name of this new religion. Other forms of Buddhist thought had arrived and developed in Japan previously in the Nara Era, starting in the 6th century C.E., but Zen as we know it in Japan today was a later (13th century) import. But it was highly intellectual, and mostly suited to the tastes of the ruling or upper classes. It focused on what was immaterial and fleeting, which set the stage for the great themes and subjects of traditional Japanese music, art and poetry.

As the nation of Japan is limited in space and resources and prone to disastrous earthquakes and tsunamis (Jap: “harbour waves”), there is no word that they understand better than impermanence: the great ephemerality of things. Thus Zen and its focus on the impermanence and/or the spiritual non-reality of materials naturally fit Japanese consciousness through the arts. This feeling took many forms as Japan modernized and moved into both the 20th and 21st centuries, but it still lays directly under the surface of modernity to such a degree that I would confidently argue Zen impermanence and its various descriptions remains relevant.

For example, a key phrase to understanding Japanese philosophy and creativity is mono-no aware, the “impermanent feeling of things”: aspects of nature and art that increases sensitivity to ephemerality in an individual. One way this manifests in material culture is the patina of age on an object. An old calligraphy brush is prized for its tattered bristles, as it will mark the page in such a way as to contain hihaku: blank, parallel gaps in its brushstrokes created by its asymmetries, which are thus mentally “filled in” by one’s psychological anticipation of closure. It is only natural for things to decay and fall apart, so this brush is displaying mono-no-aware by both looking and “acting” naturally decrepit. So when you see Japanese calligraphy, the irregularities and asymmetries in the strokes are highly prized if they are felt to contain the right kind of mono-no-aware.

A huge part of mono-no-aware is how filled with “ma” something is, a sense of “absolute timing (or space)”, a blank section felt to be “pregnant” with creative potential. If you see a Japanese abstract painting with a single black calligraphy stroke down the middle, the blank parts are said to be filled with ma if it is considered a great painting. The blank parts have no paint or ink, but they seem to have a feeling that they are about to “burst forth”; they brim with an invisible creative feeling like they are about to contain something other than space. Ma is essentially space or silence that makes the visible or audible more profound. I like to use the example of a milkshake. Without the air mixed in, milkshake mix is a syrupy sludge; an overly-sweet ooze. But when you froth it all up with a mixer you get a delicious milkshake, the air is what makes it great. Air is something (oxygen), but we can’t see it. Ma is something but we can’t see or hear it, but it seems to “oxygenate” what it infuses. There is nothing more impermanent than “a nothing” that doesn’t exist yet still has power over you for the brief moments you come into contact with it.

In the flute (nohkan) music used in traditional Noh theater (which I studied), little measured moments of ma are called ura-biyoushi: the silences in the music that are considered alluded to by the notes themselves! The spaces measure the notes: an eighth note’s worth of sound between two eighth notes worth of silence; not the other way around. Pretty much all cultures on the planet considered silence to be a part of marking rhythm, yet in nohkan study, notes mark how much ma is potentially occurring. Noh “music” is a sound-rich medium, made only by two drums and a flute, yet it has amazing power to move. There aren’t really even fixed notes either. Nohkan music is notated by finger positions, not notes on a staff, so each pitch can be varied if one’s fingers are shifted off the holes by a millimeter or two. The sheet music itself is a series of letters indicating fingers, rather than notes on music paper; in a sense you read the music like a recipe. Plus, the nohkan itself is actually a ryuteki flute from gagaku music, altered in such a way that the notes aren’t pitched evenly (C, D, E, etc.). It could go from a mostly flat C to D half sharp to a slightly sharp E, and so on. So with that already in place, plus the variations in possible finger position, the nohkan isn’t a flute in the traditional sense; more of a flute shaped, sound-making tube!

Note: at one particular jazz quartet gig fo example I played a nohkan through a harmonizer pedal, creating a kind of weird, electric banshee howling effect. Many audience members came up to me afterwards and said they got chills down their spine, like there was a ghost in the room. You can kind of do that without the pedal, but it is fun to watch people squirm in delight thanks to the power of digitally enhanced Zen aesthetics!

The timing of rhythm on the drums too is a matter of instinct rather than a metronomic measurement; the drummers move from sound to sound, and pattern to pattern, when the psychological needs of the play demand it (the music includes specific shouts as well as part of the drumming). Noh music is thus a fascinating kind of “strictly-yet-freely ‘composed’ improvisation”, to put it into rather insufficient terms. And the artists of greatest renown have a rare flowering of artistic instinct (“hana”), a profound naturalness that can’t be studied. It is interesting that silence is not only a profound part of Zen-inspired music, but a way of describing the aesthetics of a beautiful painting as well. If a work contains profound visual silence (ma) then it is oto-nashi — “without sound” (soundless) — containing the  aesthetic silence of Beauty itself.

Those who can exemplify genius levels of ma, feelings of mono-no-aware, and so on over the course of a career are given very rare and special recognition in Japan. They are awarded the title of Ningen Kokuhou – “Living National Treasure”. They come to embody an art form, and thus are in essence its living soul. The three categories of Ningen Kokuhou are Kakko Nintei: Individual Certification of High Mastery, Sougou Nintei: Collective Certification of two or more who attain mastery as a group, and Hoji Dantai Nintei: Preservation Certification for a large group or organization that have mastered a craft in which individuality is not primary. In theory it is possible for someone to gain this kind of recognition in modern art and so on, but it is usually awarded to someone keeping some kind of traditional art alive.

So to summarize the last three posts… Japanese culture begins with the most basic cultural phenomenon, Japanese language, how the idea of Japan and its culture is shared between individuals and/or promulgated in society. To speak Japanese is to already be in culture and coloured by its inherent traits. Part of that culture-speak is the mythology of the nation’s origin(s) and relationship with the spirit world, including the imported religion of Zen Buddhism, out of which the Japanese have fashioned internationally renowned forms of music, theater, and art based on the sense of impermanence, silence, space, and austere material decay.