by Noriko Hashimoto
I) Human Interdependence with Nature Challenged by Machines
Professor Imamichi indicated, “humans are creating various machines that have structures totally inconceivable in nature and are trying to bring nature under their complete control. Human beings not only occupy the dominant position in nature but are also overpowering it and interposing machinery between nature and themselves.” We try to conquer nature by machines. But it is impossible. Through machinery, dehumanization through de-tempolarization” occurred. On the contrary, nature is something that “awaits maturation”, wait for the time to be ripe. Technology is “rushing about” or always “in motion”, while nature is “waiting”.
Nature is, according to Professor Imamichi, the teacher of “waiting and enduring”; it is not enough to look at nature, objectively, by looking after nature because “human beings are in essence a part of nature”. So, by making our inner selves truly calm, the meaning of waiting can be understood. “Stressing temporality means emulating nature’s waiting stance. This fosters the patience to wait with the unfolding of time (zeitigen), as well as an awareness of waiting.”
II) The Transcendence of Beauty by Penetrating into the life itself of objects
Artistic activities, both in creation and in appreciation, are products of some time process: the essence of the human being is temporality. Artistic activities can recover from dehumanization. The new virtue “waiting and enduring” will be realized by art. The aim of artistic activities is Beauty: Beauty is the Idea of coincidence of Beauty and Goodness like Platon. (the transcendence of ousia) This practical realization is, according to Basyo (松尾芭蕉）”Let’s learn from pine-tree about the pine tree and from bamboo about the bamboo.” Daisetsu Suzuki (鈴木大拙）wrote, “Draw bamboos for ten years, become a bamboo, then forget all about bamboos when you are drawing. In possession of this infallible technique, the individual places himself at the mercy of inspiration.” To become a bamboo and to forget that you are one with it while drawing — this is the Zen of a bamboo, this is moving with the “rhythmic movement of the spirit” which resides in the bamboo as well as in the artist himself.” Suzuki said, it is a statement of intuition or perception. It is penetrating into the life itself of objects. It is the realization of coincidence between transcendence and rhizomes at one time by intuition.
III) Love with Nature (Entrust Nature)
I introduce a ceramist, Raku Jikinyu (楽直入), the 15th 樂吉右衛門, the famous representative ceramist in Japan and what he said about the art of ceramics. He strongly pointed out doubts about the sense of values to the world.
He uses his family’s clay, which was made and kept for 100 years. Three generations earlier his great grandfather, had made this clay as his family had always made it in his family’s traditional way. Presently he is mixing and producing clay for the next 100 years. His family always thinks and practices for the next, and next generations. He clearly says he makes and creates clay for 3 generations.
He burns teacup-clay for individual cups, one by one by fire, and uses bellows for making a whirlpool of an air current. It means he asks for the help of natural phenomena. On the teacup we can find red and green colors separately and together: it occurred by quantity of glaze, by chemical changes: its red is from the input of sufficient oxygen, on the contrary green by less oxygen. He said he put teacup into chaos: the co-existence of red and green denies the possibility of making assumptions about what happened. He says he must entrust everything to Nature. He said teacup comes from powers of Nature. And finally consciousness and unconsciousness, the artificial and the natural, the necessary and the accidental, if possible, combined each other, a teacup will be created.
Human beings must realize harmony with Nature. They must accept the slogan “to be satisfied with what we have”. They must entrust Nature, not conquer it! We must borrow the powers of Nature.
IV) Suggestion from “Yaman-Ba(山姥）”
Among No-plays, serious and important works relate stories of “Aged-women”, “Ba(婆)” means aged-ladies, and Yama(山) means “mountain”. In the depth of Mountains, Yamanba (mountain crone) lives and asks travelers, who lose their way in the mountains, to stay one night in her hermit’s cell. We believe Yamanba is a ghost or monster.
In a No-play, “Yamanba” is a young dancer who plays a song and dances (Kusemai) very well. She decides to go to the Buddhist Temple “Zenko-ji” with her retainer and servant. On the way, in the deep bosom of the mountain, they lose their way, and must walk barefooted. Suddenly the darkness comes down around them: an aged-lady, in fact the Mountain Crone, appears and says, “Please stay one night in my hermit’s cell”. They accept her proposal.
In the old days, the crone was a famous dancer and specialist of song and dance, called Kusemai. She says about herself. “A mountain crone is the woman who helps people. However, lowly women cannot see me, and people recognize me as an evil spirit.” “The sound spreading in the gorge becomes an echo traveling over the top of trees.” And chorus sings, “It will bring you an opportunity to hear the silent voice which you can hear in your enlightened heart.”
She says “I will come again and do my song and dance in the light of the moon.” She appears and does her song and dance, Kusemai, beautifully in the Moonlight! And Yamanba says I have waited so long for this wonderful occasion. I will show you my true form. She says the Principle of Buddhism is like this: I appear as a female ogre. However, when we think that rightness and wrongness possess the same nature, just as the verity of Shikisoku-zeku(色即是空) exists because of Budda’s Law. Paired concepts like, “willows are green” and “flowers are red” are all “empty”. Her expression is similar to what the poem says: “I lament this transient sorrowful world. My transient self is like the empty shell of a cicada, on my sleeve.” And she disappears: We the audience believe the Mountain Crone is going to Heaven.