The Japanese aesthetic concept of wabi-sabi has become something of a fashionable rage in America during the past few years, partly as an attitudinal accompaniment to the cultural influx of Kondo-style decluttering (Marie Kondo has said she’s partly inspired by wabi-sabi) and its interaction with the trendy rise of a minimalist aesthetic. Wabi-sabi refers to an attitude of finding beauty in imperfection, especially as related to incompleteness or impermanence. Perhaps the most commonly offered example is the beauty of a chipped, cracked, uneven, or otherwise flawed and imperfect earthenware teacup or teapot.
The related concept of mono no aware has received less airplay, but it’s still a presence. It refers to the bittersweet realization that all things are transient and ephemeral. It has been succinctly translated (although it defies easy translation) as “the pathos of things.” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy explains how the most popular point of contact for this attitude in present-day Japan is the appreciation of cherry blossoms:
The most frequently cited example of mono no aware in contemporary Japan is the traditional love of cherry blossoms, as manifested by the huge crowds of people that go out every year to view (and picnic under) the cherry trees. The blossoms of the Japanese cherry trees are intrinsically no more beautiful than those of, say, the pear or the apple tree: they are more highly valued because of their transience, since they usually begin to fall within a week of their first appearing. It is precisely the evanescence of their beauty that evokes the wistful feeling of mono no aware in the viewer.
“Japanese Aesthetics,” in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
I’ve long had a passing interest in Japanese aesthetic concepts, ever since Alan Watts first turned me on to the concept of yugen, sometimes described as a sense of the profound and mysterious in the world, as encountered in scenes of suggestive beauty such as the sight of the sun sinking behind a hill, accompanied by the aching recognition of the forever unknowable vista beyond the horizon. The longing, aching, mesmerizing quality arises from the fact that the beauty and profundity are definitely suggested but never directly apprehendable. Because of this, I’ve always associated yugen, perhaps not totally correctly, with sehnsucht, and the connection has felt meaningful, for it has explained aspects of my subjective experience to me.
In any case, returning to the point about wabi-sabi and mono no aware, I recently rewatched the movie Troy, which I’ve always been fond of, and was reminded again of the interesting changes that its narrative works upon the character of Achilles, as played by Brad Pitt, when it transforms him from Homer’s pure breast-beating warrior and rage machine into a warrior who’s also something of a tragic philosopher. And not only a tragic philosopher, but one who sounds like he’s somehow channeling a classical Japanese one. I noticed this connection for the first time with this latest re-viewing. In his conversation with Briseis, the Trojan virgin priestess of Apollo who becomes his war prize and lover, the Achilles of Troy says the following, which has been quoted all over the Internet:
I’ll tell you a secret. Something they don’t teach you in your temple. The gods envy us. They envy us because we’re mortal, because any moment might be our last. Everything is more beautiful because we’re doomed. You will never be lovelier than you are now. We will never be here again.
It’s a singularly arresting and effective moment in the film. And this is despite the fact that it’s untrue not only to Homer’s Achilles but to Homer in general; in the Iliad and Odyssey, the gods don’t envy humans. Rather, they love their immortality, and they toy with us as their pawns. But I still find myself appreciating Troy’s reimagining of Achilles. When an ancient Greek warrior speaks Japanese aesthetic-philosophical wisdom, it’s probably worth paying attention.
More than half incidentally, for a direct Hollywood representation of mono no aware, you can’t do better than these two scenes from The Last Samurai, which include the presence of literal cherry blossoms.