It’s okay. I have never been a friend of instant consumption. Take as long as you like for an idea to sink in. Ideas are educational time bombs – you never know when they will go off.

I don’t know if I’m reading too much into it, but I recently found out that fireworks in Japanese is written 火花 (fire+flower). I’d always assumed it was written the same way as it is in Chinese (煙花, smoke+flower), but apparently not! It just reminded me of this post and Snoop’s comment.

Noted with thanks.

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.

Noted with thanks. Speaking for myself, I don’t mind taking the time to think if it is something worth thinking about…

Also, I just personally enjoy looking at the psychological aspects of things. It makes art even more fun for me. :)

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.

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.

cang sang mei refers to beauty in the natural erosion of once splendid things with the passage of time.

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!

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. ^^

Japan borrowed heavily from China, but always with a sense of difference and independence.

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?