Japanese Philosophy: A Sourcebook

Ōnishi Yoshinori

1216 Ōnishi Yoshinori 大西克禮 (1888–1959) Ōnishi Yoshinori taught aesthetics at the University of Tokyo from 1922 until his retirement in 1949. As his voluminous writings reflect, he specialized in German aesthetics from the Romantics through Kant to twentieth-century phenomenology . Ōnishi applied his knowledge of western philosophy to the elucidation of key concepts in Japanese aesthetics and poetics that had been debated and discussed for centuries by Japanese poets and theorists. His life work is reflected in a two-volume work on Aesthetics, the first volume of which deals with the West while the second, published posthumously the following year, takes up the analysis of key Japanese aesthetic categories. His 1939 work on Yūgen and Aware fills out his argument that the two concepts may be seen as counterparts to the notion of interiority in the West. In the following extract, we see him summarize the “conceptual” traits of źyūgenŻ, only in the end to challenge their adequacy to explain the way it actually functions in poetry. [mfm] Yūgen Ōnishi Yoshinori 1939, 85–91 I would now like to single out some of the elements that are contained in the meaning of źyūgenŻ. To begin with, the notion of yūgen, even in its most generalized explanation, remains hidden or covert, lacking clarity of appearance, as if there were something in it closed in on itself. This important element is no doubt suggested already by the characters used to transcribe the word. Like “the thin covering of clouds over the moon” and “the mountain mist hanging on autumn leaves” of which Shōtetsu writes, there is a sense of something delicately blocking the way to direct perception. From there, a second meaning emerges as a matter of course, a kind of dimness or haze or faintness. To miss the intent here is to think of things under “a bright and cloudless sky, everything the face of delight.” But these traits of yūgen rise aesthetically beyond these effects to create a special meaning. And the sense of dread and discomfort towards what is hidden there in the dark is completely missing. Rather, attention is drawn to a kind of gentleness, restraint, and softness that stands opposed to what is exposed, immediate, and sharply defined. At the same time, there arises here a sense of the presence of an indistinct landscape, like “dew lingering all about the flowers of spring” or like the words Teika chose for his assessment of the Miyagawa poetry contest, “the heart of the ō n i s h i yo s h i n o r i | 1217 matter, lightly”12 —a sense of elegance and greatness that does not exert reason for too much clarity. A third and no less very closely related element in the meaning is the sense of stillness that accompanies what is dimly hidden within the general notion of yūgen. But along with this sense is an indication of a state of mind that reaches sentiments of beauty as well, as when one is absorbed in the tearful feelings of abandon to the colorless, voiceless sky of an autumn evening of which Kamo no Chōmei* speaks, or “a lonely thatched dwelling in a late-autumn shower” that Shunzei13 praised for its poetic spirit of yūgen, or the fleeting sight of snipes flying out of a swamp in an autumn nightfall. The fourth sense of yūgen is what is called profundity, a sense of “depth and distance.” This element is, of course, related to the foregoing, but even in general notions of yūgen it does not have to do with mere temporal or spatial distance. There is a particular, spiritual meaning here, as in the case of a profound and abstruse idea like the “deep and mysterious buddha-dharma” (Rinzairoku 1.18). We may consider part of yūgen the corresponding sentiments of beauty that have been given particular emphasis by those like Shōtetsu and Shinkei,14 what is often referred to in theories of poetry as “depth of heart,” or as Teika and others put it, “having heart.” In the fifth place, and directly related to the above meaning, I would point to an aspect of completeness. The contents of things with yūgen are not simply hidden, dim, and difficult to understand. They hold a concentration, as it were, of something infinitely great, a coagulation of an inhaltsschwere Fülle. I believe that here, in virtue of this and the previously...