Iwa ni Hana

There is a word that I always encourage people who are studying Chinese and Japanese to ask every native speaker they come across for a definition in his or her own words, and that word is 縁. 縁 is pronounced as yuan in Chinese and en or enishi in Japanese (for the purpose of this post I will refer to it as en since I will be mostly making references to Japanese works). Chances are, you will find that the individual you ask will often turn out to have his or her own definition ready at hand that go beyond the usual definitions found in dictionaries.

The short version of my own definition would be “meaningful chance,” whereas the long version would be:

Meaningful chance that tracks you down with military precision like a missile, across vast expanse of time and infinite space, in order to throw you into the ambit of a specific person or a thing, whom or which you may be either meeting for the first time, or meeting again against all odds, in order to facilitate a result that may or may not come about.

En is different from “fate” – which is known as 命運 [ming yun] in Chinese and 運命[unmei] in Japanese. Fate happens for a certainty. En is less decisive – it is only a precondition (or a set of preconditions) that has the potential to facilitate a certain result.

Note also that I say meaningful chance – it is not random chance for no discernible purpose. When people talk about en, it is always implied that there is some deeper purpose or meaning. What comes to you by virtue of en is always something that leaves a footprint in your life.

Perhaps I should illustrate this with more examples:

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You just know that the Chinese civilization has not been around for five thousand years for nothing by looking at all the words they have for describing different nuances of beauty – of beauty in the abstract, in nature, in men and women. Whatever you can think of, the Chinese is likely to have coined a word for it already. If you were ever to compile all those words together, you may actually end up with a nice dictionary of several hundred pages. What I have time to write about on this blog is only a tip of the iceberg.

There are two words in Chinese that describe the beauty of decay. They are easily confused with each other but I think several fine points of distinction would be as follows (feel free to disagree with me though):

墮落美 [duo luo mei]
The decadent beauty of something fallen that is alluring in a sinister way, but is at the same time evocative of pain and longing in being a reminder of what it once was and what it no longer is – namely, the pristine state of innocence and purity it can no longer return to. In some (but not all) cases, the evil originates from a pure, noble and innocent motivation that turned bad in its means and execution for lack of choice, and from its existing state of badness it can only go from bad to worse and beyond salvation. The emphasis of this word is on the state where you have fallen from. Duo luo mei says to the viewer: ‘There was a time when I used to be not like this.’ It evokes pain and regret in the viewer, in that beneath those layers of decay, there may perhaps be a shred of that past innocence left.

頹廢美 [tui fei mei]
The decadent beauty of something fallen that is strangely attractive in its defiance and self-abandonment. It is frequently associated with moral decay but instead of angsting over its downfall, it rejoices in its fallen state. The emphasis of this word is the state of ruin as it is. The vision is focused on the end which is near – of impending doom, destruction, disease or death. It says  to the viewer: ‘This is just the way I am now and I have no regret about it. I long for the final release and I shall put on my best dress to greet that final release.’ It is brazen and is indifferent to what the viewer feels. Tui fei mei springs from the conviction that there is no tomorrow and tends to expresses itself in a rebellious attitude, by going out of the way to do something to excite jaded senses, to be lost in worldly pleasures and self-gratifications, and the pursuit of all that is unwholesome by society’s standards. Often, it is about slipping one notch lower, then another notch lower, then another notch lower, but keeping up pretenses of greatness with extravagant and sumptuous external appearances which are calculated to hide the interior emptiness. Tui fei mei is often found in artistic works towards the end of each dynastic cycle in Chinese history; an example of this would be the poetry of the late Tang.

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New artbook of the PRC illustrator Eno. (何何舞)

Cover image of Eno's artbook 'Marquee Moon'

News reached me that Eno’s new artbook entitled Anemone (银莲花) is to go on sale early next month. This is her second artbook since Marquee Moon (华盖之月).

Eno. is by far my favorite illustrator these days. I adore that androgynous, ethereal beauty and that delicate, graceful touch in her illustrations. I see that she is also trying her hand at manhua these days – namely a series entitled Ling Miao Qian (零秒前), which seems to be a sports series set in a Chinese high school.* (Personally, I wish it had been a manhua series set in premodern China, so that you get to see in spades the sort of beautiful, flowing black hair which she is so good drawing. But that’s just me.)

Earlier last year, she also did a series of illustrations on the theme of Lan Ling Wang (兰陵王), a prince of the kingdom of Qi (齊) who lived in 6th century China. According to legend, he was a skilled soldier, but his extraordinary and somewhat feminine good looks did not seem to strike much terror into the hearts of his enemies. So he devised these scary-looking masks to wear on the battlefield. His siblings were jealous of him; he was poisoned and died at the young age of 30 or thereabouts.

One of Eno's illustrations of Lan Ling Wang

Rumour has it that the novelist Tanaka Yoshiki (田中芳樹) also has a work in progress on the theme of Lan Ling Wang.** If the novel(s) – assuming they are not aborted efforts (as is so often the case with Tanaka Yoshiki) – were illustrated by Eno., that would be quite something to behold indeed.

* You can see the details from her blog here: ttp://blog.sina.com.cn/enoeno

** You can see the details from his editor’s blog here: ttp://a-hiro.cocolog-nifty.com/diary/2009/02/post-ae8d.html

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Spatial and Temporal Space

In English, the phrase ‘time and space’ goes together. In Japanese, one word encompasses both the meaning of spatial space (ie. the distance between point A and B) and temporal space (ie. the duration between two points in time). That word is 間 [ma].

But ma also has secondary meaning, and it is ‘luck’. If you want to say that so-and-so is a lucky person, you can either use 運がいい [un ga ii] or 間がいい [ma ga ii]. (運 [Un] is the more frequently used word for ‘luck’.) Likewise, if you want to say that so-and-so is an unlucky person, you can use either 運が悪い [un ga warui] or 間が悪い [ma ga warui].

In other words, you may think of the relationship between un and ma as this: Luck is really about having the right amount of time and space in between.

When I first observed this relationship between un and ma many years ago when I was just beginning to learn Japanese, I was reminded of how the Chinese astrological concepts of 旺 [wang] and 煞 [sha] essentially echo the same idea:

A Chinese astrologer may tell you that a certain person/object ‘wang’ you. This is typically translated to mean that the person/object brings you good luck in your life. But I think another way of looking at it is that if that person/object is in the right slot in your life, then he/she/it will attract the other right pieces to fill in the remaining slots. In other words, your life will be enriched because all the pieces make room for each other and together they all fit.

A Chinese astrologer may also tell you that a certain person/object ‘sha’ you. This is typically translated to mean that the person/object brings you misfortune in your life. Similarly, I think another way of looking at it is that if that person/object occupies a place in your life, then you can be sure that i) all the other pieces in your other slots will have be pushed out just to accommodate this person/object, or ii) that person/object repels the other pieces in your life from coming to you at all, or iii) the other pieces in your life will fall apart even if they do come to you. Chinese astrology sees this as a misfortune, because your life becomes poorer than what it could have been.

This approach is somewhat in reverse to the western astrology (or at least what I have seen of it), which sees a person’s life as separate domains of love, career, family etc that do not overflow to each other; Chinese astrology sees a human being’s life as one integrated whole. (more…)

Japanese sensibility perceives beauty in falling cherry petals, whereas Chinese sensibility perceives beauty in fallen flower petals.* To put it another way, the Japanese mind seems inclined to find beauty in the active act of destruction, whereas the Chinese mind seems inclined to find beauty in the passive act of coming upon what is already or partially destroyed. The words to describe these perceptions of beauty are known as 破壊の美 [hakai no bi] in Japanese and 滄桑美 [cang sang mei] in Chinese.

Hakai no Bi

There are many manifestations of hakai no bi. Hakai means ‘destruction’; bi means ‘beauty’. ‘Destruction’ in this sense not only includes active acts of violence but is also inclusive of a life force burning furiously towards its exhaustion. The fall of cherry petals, kamikaze deaths and anything to do with the writer Mishima Yukio (三島由紀夫) and his works are typical examples of hakai no bi.

One such manifestation of hakai no bi which I think is central to Japanese aesthetics is the concept of 潔い [isagiyoi]. Isagiyoi is a powerful concept in Japanese culture and though a typical dictionary would give its meaning in English as ‘graceful’, ‘manly’, ‘sportsmanlike’, ‘noble’, ‘courageous’, ‘readily’, ‘with good grace’ etc , none of these is correct – or at least not quite. There is a peculiar meaning to this word which I would personally define as:

A ready resolution to relinquish or end the existence of something/oneself at an immaculate, pure or perfect condition, either before the onset of impurity or imperfection (when or should they set in), or at the first sign of such impurity or imperfection. It is a kind of self-determination to let go of or withdraw something/oneself in a dignified manner , without fear or hesitation, before the downhill, decay or dishonour sets in. At the extreme end, this resolution may border on madness and is prone to manifest itself in death or destruction.

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