[破壊の美] [滄桑美] Broken is beautiful
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.
I think the renowned death of Mishima Yukio by seppuku (ritual suicide by disembowelment) is an example of isagiyoi. I also think the manga stories of Shimizu Reiko (清水玲子) is unique among other shoujo manga because the climax of a lot of her stories are really isagiyoi in action.
There is also a word in Japanese that is frequently used to describe works of literature, films, manga and anime which bring physical violence to such an extreme that there is a strange, eerie beauty to it. That word is 暴力美学 [bouryoku bigaku]. Bouryoku means ‘violence’; bigaku means ‘aesthetics’. The films of Kitano Takeshi (北野武) and Miki Takeshi (三池崇史), the manga series Saint Seiya (聖闘士星矢) and the anime series Shigurui (シグルイ) would be good examples of bouryoku bigaku. Saint Seiya, for example, was the godfather of bouryoku bigaku when it comes to the shounen fight manga. It was the first manga series in which violence was highly stylized on its own aesthetic terms: each character is trained to perform lethal attacks that are unique to himself, each attack has a specific name to it and some of these attacks are very pretty to watch. It is no exaggeration to say that it set the pattern which nearly all later shounen fight manga followed.
Note that bouryoku bigaku is not exclusive to Japanese works – I have also seen the word used to describe the films of Tarantino, among others.
Cang Sang Mei
I said earlier that the Chinese sees beauty in fallen flower petals – I think a western equivalent of this sentiment is well-expressed in Shelley’s poem Ozymandias. When the Chinese want to express that beauty in past splendour or ruins, they use the word cang sang mei.
There is a legend behind the word cang sang – it is shortened form of the phrase 滄海桑田 [cang hai sang tian]. According to the legend narrated in a compilation of stories about immortals in Chinese mythology entitled Shen Xian Zhuang (神仙傳), the immortal Ma Gu (痲姑) had seen the Eastern Sea (東海 – which translates into the Pacific Ocean in modern terms) turn into a field no less than three times since she became immortal. Cang sang and cang hai sang tian describe the vicissitudes in the human world. Mei means ‘beauty’ and cang sang mei refers to beauty in the natural erosion of once splendid things with the passage of time.
In the Chinese literary masterpiece Dream of the Red Chamber (紅樓夢), there is a renowned scene known as 黛玉葬花 [dai yu zang hua] that had seized the Chinese imagination for many centuries. The scene is about many things, and one of these things is the graphical beauty of a talented, beautiful and well-born young lady called Daiyu (黛玉) burying fallen flower petals and composing a beautiful poem which is about (among other things) the vicissitudes and fragility of human life, including that of her own. Daiyu is the aesthete among her peers in the story and that scene is interpreted by critics as an expression of her aestheticism. The scene is not only graphically beautiful in itself (it inspired many graphical illustrations, crafts and classical Chinese operas), there is also an unspeakable beauty in her act of going out of her way to bury the petals of fallen flowers (against the vast background of the decline of a once affluent aristocratic family and the grander cosmic order of things in the universe across eons which the story depicts – you get the idea). That beauty is known to the Chinese as cang sang mei.
It also struck me that classical Chinese poets did not seem inclined to compose on the theme of present splendour; instead they liked to contemplate on past splendour. Even modern Chinese literature and films that are worth their salt make a point of paying tribute to cang sang mei. For example, the recurring theme in the entire oeuvre of director Wong Kar-wai (王家衛) is time’s erosion on once dear and beautiful things long lost in the past.
In light of the above, I also have a pet theory that goes like this: it is common knowledge that big-budget epic Chinese films like The Curse of the Golden Flower (滿城盡帶黃金甲) tend not be received with critical applause by the native Chinese audience, and the supposition that such films are ‘aimed at pleasing foreigners’ (read: un-Chinese) is often cited as the reason. So what, then, is a big-budget epic Chinese film that would please the Chinese? My tentative answer would be an epic story that is told not so much in media res, but told by a witness of those epic events as he or she personally perceives and remembers them, long after those events shook the world. Chinese aesthetic sensibility is not so much interested in fabulous things as they exist in the present – they are more interested in fragments of things that remind them of how splendid those things once was in the faraway past – of things that inevitably end on a sad note colored with cang sang mei.
*This is just one of many examples of how Chinese and Japanese aesthetics often find beauty in exactly opposite things. Here is another example: the Chinese liked their Ming vases to bear symmetrical precision with polished surfaces, whereas the Japanese liked their chawan to have asymmetrical shapes and grainy surfaces. Their respective approach to symmetry also applies to classical poetry – the Chinese poets of yore wrote their poems with the same number of syllables in each line (there some exceptions but this is the general rule), whilst their Japanese counterparts wrote theirs with different numbers of syllables.
Shall I be the first to comment? We thank you for bringing us closer to the beauty of the east. These are things that one can hardly ever meet on internet and in english. We are waiting with suspense the continuation of your previous blog on this one, we’re sure that you’ll bring to us the treasures of cultures, fragments of beauty like the ukiyo-e screens.
P.S.:Very suiting article for the beginning of something new that holds memories of a ‘splendour past’
ayame:
Many kind thanks for being the first to comment. Yes, I received a flood of emails expressing much the same sentiment after I announced the move from Typepad to WordPress. And many more kind thanks for appreciating the purpose of this blog (which is to share things of beauty and thought-provoking ideas). I assure you that I am ever whipping myself to improve, improve and improve. The thing with insight is that it matures with age, so hopefully you will find the new upcoming posts to be even more insightful than the old.
May I be the second then. ^^
Indeed a very nice post as a first post after the reset. Especially that was sort of my feeling, since I was still brooding over me failing to save the Mononoke posts in time…
I really like the explanations of especially the Chinese word. And in fact you made me want to read the “Dream of the Red Chamber”. When I expressed that notion to my parents they did give me some looks. (It seems this book is not just classical, but also very hard to read and with my level of ability saying something far-fetching like this, it sure shoked them.)
But things like these really motivate one to study on further. ^^
Ok, I shall be the third.
I’m illiterate when it comes to Chinese culture/literature (apart from 西遊記), but Japanese people do love when things end in a graceful way. So do cherry blossoms. So do fireworks, perhaps the purest example of Japanese sensibility regarding this subject.
Also, almost OT, but I’m just in the process of reading Marcel Proust’s “In Search of Lost Time”. Beautiful and elegant French language ; virtually nothings happens, but it’s mesmerizing. A diphanous, radiating journey in things long foregone…
Anyway, nice new blog, crisp and clean (so far). I’m glad I saved most of your late blog (including the Mononoke sub-blog) the day before the new start.
Speaking of, I checked the Mononoke official site, and it seems that they are releasing a “Bakeneko + Mononoke” DVD box-set. I’m also glad to learn that they sold 140,000 copies of this magnificent series.
ttp://www.mononoke-anime.com/dvdbox/index.html
Sorry for the double-post.
Are there no captchas ? (not that I miss them the least bit…)
I wonder if these differences you point out between Japanese and Chinese aesthetics developed from the point at which Japanese art diverged from the trend of imitating Chinese art and instead began to develop its own style.
I also wonder why you title your article “Broken” is beautiful. Between broken and destruction, I think there’s a negative bias always hovering over “broken,” while “destruction” can float either way, as you describe.
Finally, I found your blog only about a week before you closed the old one. How unfortunate. As I would love to browse through them, will you be saving the archives?
This “worship of etropy” is quite common in western art too. A Carcass by Boudelaire is good example of this.
I think there’s no point at which Japanese aesthetics begins to diverge from Chinese aesthetics: the difference is there from the beginning. Already in the 6th century you have Empress Suiko writing to the Chinese Emperor “from the Empress of the Rising Sun to the Emperor of the Setting Sun”. The very first histories made in Japan systematically praise Japan as the superior nation (of course, these texts were written in Chinese characters).
Japan borrowed heavily from China, but always with a sense of difference and independence.
@ Alex Leavitt
“I also wonder why you title your article “Broken” is beautiful. Between broken and destruction, I think there’s a negative bias always hovering over “broken,” while “destruction” can float either way, as you describe.”
I don’t quite think that “broken” is so much more negative. If there is a diffrence I would rathing think “destruction pictures the active act out, while broken is just passive and shows the remainings after it.
But perhaps this is because the German word “Scherbe” is (literally) translated into “broken (pieces of) glass”, and “Scherbe” is somewhat a word that actually represents anything after it’s been crushed, but still has some sort of beauty or at least something to dwell/cry over as the remainings of something tht is inevitably lost. (I almost think “Scherbe” would be one of these words “with a halo” around them in German.)
But I like the title as it is. It gives a really nice alliteration. ^^
I got this feeling a lot reading and re-reading Tokien’s Middle-Earth novels. The ancient wisdom and beauty of the elves are made more beautiful in their passing. The wistfulness of the telling of how they once were adds to this effect I believe.
@ fritzs
“worship of entropy” is a fine way of putting it. I shall use it in the future for great justice!
Shina Luna,
I would suggest that you start off with David Hawkes’ English translation of it.
ttp://www.amazon.com/Golden-Story-Stone-Dream-Chamber/dp/0140442936
In my opinion, this translation is funnier than the original. I guess there is something about the English language that lends itself easily to humour.
Snoop’:
Yes, fireworks would be an example of something along the lines of ‘a life force burning furiously towards its exhaustion’.
I remember reading an English translation of the first volume of Marcel Proust’s “In Search of Lost Time” many years ago. In fact, I also bought a Japanese translation of it by Inoue Kyuuichirou (井上究一郎) on the shelf which I never got around to read.
Yes, I heard about the DVD set of Bakeneko and Mononoke too. BTW – the other day, I also tried to order the ‘Umibouzu’ novel through a local Japanese bookstore (a well-established one), but I was told that the publisher is so obscure that the book is not distributed through the usual main distributors…
I am actually still experimenting with WordPress’ settings for posting comments. After I got some annoying spam comments from porn sites, I decided to screen comments for approval first. I will see how this goes for a while.
Alex Leavitt:
I agree with animekritik that the differences were there to begin with.
I also agree with Shina Luna that the word ‘broken’ conveys a negative bias per se. Alliteration is one reason why I chose it. But if you really must know, ‘broken is beautiful’ is actually borrowed from a certain regular reader when he described to me the anime series ‘Mouryou no Hako’ (魍魎の匣) as possessing a kind of ‘broken-is-beautiful’ aesthetics. It was partly his words that inspired this post, because I realized that English lacks such words to describe that sort of beauty, though Japanese and Chinese have a range of words to describe them. You will probably see me posting more about aesthetic concepts like these ones later on.
The only thing I have of the old blog is a data file exported from Typepad, which contains thousands of private email addresses of people who posted comments.I am afraid I do not have the time to remove them all manually, so I am afraid I am not in a position to distribute the data file.
fritzs:
I believe ‘entropy’ refers to something very different…
Personally, I think Baudelaire’s poem weighs more heavily along the lines of ‘fascination with the morbid’ than anything like cang sang mei per se. The emphasis is more on the profanity rather than the passage of time, but that’s just me.
animekritik:
Agreed.
ghostlightning:
Yes, recently I am reading some books on medieval history, and descriptions of barbarians coming upon works of Roman architecture and wondering if they were built by ‘giants’ are probably something along the lines as you described.
I wonder if part of why people think “broken” is beautiful, is a natural way to cope with violence and misery, by finding splendor in it?
goodyfun:
I think it depends on what kind of “broken” are you referring to. There are at least several kinds referred to in the post.
In any case, I personally doubt that these cultures approach that sort of beauty as a psychological cure – I think these cultures really do possess that kind of aesthetic sensibility to see those shades of beauty in terms of their own merit.
Of course humans don’t intentionally approach these sorts of beautys while thinking of them in a psychological way… but every metaphor, story, and poem find their roots in more animalistic feelings.
Also, I just personally enjoy looking at the psychological aspects of things. It makes art even more fun for me.
Another thing I forgot to mention is that I wasn’t considering only one type of beauty, but a broader generalization. I mean, if I were to think about things more specifically there would be too much to write about in one reply. ^^;
goodyfun:
Noted with thanks. Speaking for myself, I don’t mind taking the time to think if it is something worth thinking about…
I would suggest that transience is beautiful partly because it is linked with scarcity.
It is interesting to me that in several cultures love for the imperfect – or the apparently imperfect – is considered refined.
@animekritik – One remembers Machiavelli’s assertion that the smaller nation is often quicker to assert its pride and superiority.
moritheil:
Noted with thanks.