18/11/12Writing as Tea Ceremony : Kawabata's Geido Aesthetics | Carriere | International Fiction Rev iew

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Home > Volume 29, Numbers 1 and 2 (2002) > Carriere

Writing as Tea Ceremony: Kawabata's GeidoAesthetics

Peter M. Carriere, Georgia College & State University

In his article "Alternative Modernity? Playing the Japanese Game ofCulture" (1994), Andrew Feenberg suggests that Yasunari Kawabata'snovel The Master of Go (1954) embodies the Zen Buddhist principle thatplaying Go in traditional Japan constituted a quest for self-realization anda path to spiritual unity-in effect, a "Tao," or "Way," the Way of Go. [1]The goal of the contest was not victory but spiritual enlightenment: as amomentary refugee from culture, the self was reduced by subjection torule and struggle to the nothingness of Zen, and the game became anagent of consciousness effacement, the Zen "no-mind" that is aprerequisite for spiritual unity. This insight, that immersion in Goconstituted a Way in traditional Japanese culture, suggests thatKawabata's immersion in the aesthetics of religion and culture was anattempt to create an aesthetic Way in the spirit of cha-no-yu, or teaceremony, which he described in his Nobel Prize acceptance speech of 12December 1968 as "sad, austere, autumnal," concealing "a great richnessof spirit." [2] The object of the tea ceremony is to awaken or reinforce inthe participant a sense of cultural identity and spiritual connection throughits ritualized aesthetics. The object of other forms of aesthetic rituals,such as the art of fiction, for instance, might do the same. Indeed, such aconnection between art and religion flourished during Japan's medievalperiod (950-1400), when "religious and aesthetic values became virtuallyco-terminous in what was called geido-the 'Tao' (or Way) of aesthetics."[3] This essay will examine the aesthetic, cultural, religious, and historicalcontexts out of which Kawabata's prewar masterpiece Snow Country(1947) and his last novel, Beauty and Sadness (1961), emerged in orderto show that geido was an abiding element of Kawabata's fiction.

The phrase "alternative modernity" implies that Kawabata's modernismdiffers from traditional understandings of the term. By definition,however, the art of modernism is subjective, recondite, esoteric, andavant-garde. Furthermore, the symbolist aesthetic often noted inKawabata, with its emphasis on spirituality and culture, informs the worksof modernism's most celebrated writers, including T. S. Eliot, JamesJoyce, Joseph Conrad, and W. B. Yeats. Yeats's well-known affinity forJapan originated in his symbolist perception that Japan supported aculture infused with myth, legend, and a hazy kind of spirtualism arisingout of a unique blending of Shinto and Buddhism.

Because of geido's similarity to the symbolist writing of some modernists,critics often suggest that Kawabata's art tends toward the symbolic. GwenBoardman relates that in Kawabata's rewriting of Snow Country, hischaracterizations went from "more 'realistic' and straightforward to'lyrical' and symbolic." [4] According to Paul St. John Mackintosh, SnowCountry "does the native spirit good by going back to the oldest Japaneseliterary traditions," and yet the novel is "modern in its narrativediscontinuity and almost symbolist imagery." [5] And Kawabata'sinvolvement with other young artists in the Shinkankaku-Ha and itspublication Bungei Jidai (1924) was, according to Boardman, "a reactionagainst the naturalistic writing and the 'proletarian' literature of their

18/11/12Writing as Tea Ceremony : Kawabata's Geido Aesthetics | Carriere | International Fiction Rev iew

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time." [6] When this same reaction in Europe takes a spiritual direction, itis labeled symbolist, though the difference is that symbolism is subjectiveand somewhat occult, whereas geido uses aesthetics as a Way withinBuddhism, an established religion.

Western discussions of Kawabata's art imply that his fiction may begrasped either in terms of unique Japanese aesthetic categories orWestern existentialism. In "Elements of Existentialism in Modern Fiction,"Mita Luz de Manuel suggests that Kawabata's modernism originates in thepervasive existential personality of his characters, that he "may well haveconnected Buddhist 'emptiness' or 'nothingness' with the nihilism ofWestern philosophy." [7] Those who interpret Kawabata throughJapanese aesthetic categories usually point out that his art containsyugen (mysterious or shadowy essence), mono no aware (poignantmelancholy), sabi (refined, seasoned simplicity), or wabi (a calm, clearstate of mind perfected in the tea ceremony). Wabi and sabi also suggestthe quiet sadness Kawabata spoke of in reference to the tea ceremony.Kawabata used all of these aesthetic labels as keys to his art in the Nobelspeech (though in his English translation Edward Seidensticker useddescriptive phrases rather than these esoteric terms).

Enlightening as these efforts may be, however, analyses based onJapanese aesthetics leave Western readers unsatisfied as to the realpurpose of Kawabata's art. We may see mono no aware as an abidingelement in The Sound of the Mountain (1954) or Beauty and Sadness, butwe still want to know what purpose it serves. The fact that Snow Countrymay illustrate wabi or sabi does not tell us what these two aestheticqualities achieve. The existential model is at odds with Kawabata'ssymbolist propensities as well as his Nobel speech, in which he insists thatit would be a mistake to confound the nihilism of Western existentialismwith the nothingness of Zen: "This is not the nothingness or emptiness ofthe West. It is rather the reverse, a universe of the spirit in whicheverything communicates freely with everything, transcending bounds,limitless" (JBM 56). Kawabata is insistent on this point and he returns to itat the close of his address: "My own works have been described as worksof emptiness," he notes, "but it is not to be taken for the nihilism of theWest. The spiritual foundations would seem to be quite different" (JBM41).

A unique feature of Japan is what Steve Odin refers to as "the primacy ofaesthetic value experience or artistic intuition as the distinguishingfeature of Japanese culture." [8] This primacy of aesthetics permeateseven the most mundane conditions of life in Japan, to the extent thatordinary store purchases are wrapped with painstaking attention paid totheir final aesthetic presentation, or food is prepared and served with afocus on its aesthetic appeal. Even behavior-bowing and sitting, forexample-has aesthetic as well as social components. The dominance ofaesthetics in a culture infused with the traditional spiritual mysteries ofShinto and Buddhism means that a complex layering occurs in Japaneseartistic expression as aesthetics, religion, and culture merge. HenceKawabata's fiction must be seen as an expression of what it means to beJapanese: the self living in harmony with nature, culture, and spiritualitythrough the disciplined application of aesthetics.

In the Nobel address, which is a discussion of Japanese aestheticprinciples and their meaning and importance to the writer, Kawabataalluded to significant and abiding figures from Japan's literary history inhis artistic development. Writers such as Dogen (1200-1253) and Myoe(1173-1232) were not just early inspirations. Their art and the eras inwhich they wrote epitomize the geido aesthetics Kawabata adopted as hestrove to achieve the same degree of harmony with nature, art,spirituality, and culture that he perceived in their work. Dogen suggestedto Kawabata "the deep quiet of the Japanese spirit" (JBM 69), while Myoeinspired the severe beauty and austere cold of Snow Country.

Kawabata began his Nobel speech by quoting a poem by Dogen called"Innate Spirit," followed by one by Myoe on the winter moon. These twopoems set the tenor of the rest of Kawabata's address. Both poemsillustrate yugen. Dogen's poem seems like a simple, four-line expressionof the four seasons: "In the spring, cherry blossoms, / in the summer thecuckoo. / In autumn the moon, and in / winter the snow, clear, cold." ButKawabata's explanation of it sheds light on the poem's embodiment ofyugen, in which that which is described becomes simply the foreground tothe greater essence that lies behind: "The snow, the moon, the blossoms,words expressive of the seasons as they move one into another, includein the Japanese tradition the beauty of mountains and rivers and grasses

and trees, of all the myriad manifestations of nature, of human feelingsas well" (JBM 68).

Myoe's poem, three short lines on the cold wind and winter moon, evokesthe same ephemeral sensations. The winter moon becomes the simpleforeground for "the myriad manifestations of nature, of human feelings,"even spiritual feelings, since it was a session of Zen meditation thatevoked the poem: "Winter moon, coming from the / clouds to keep mecompany, / Is the wind piercing, the snow cold?" The austere beauty ofnature in winter, the cold, clear air and moonlit night, suggest that whichis not part of the scene: "When we see the beauty of the snow," writesKawabata, "it is then that we think most of those close to us, and wantthem to share the pleasure. The excitement of beauty calls forth strongfellow feelings, yearnings for companionship, and the word 'comrade' canbe taken to mean human being" (JBM 68).

Kawabata's evaluation of later writers, those whose historical momentswere closer to his own, clearly suggests that geido became for him anartistic goal. For example, Ryokan (1758-1831) was important because inhis work "one feels … the emotions of old Japan and the heart of areligious faith as well" (JBM 65). To Kawabata, Ryokan suggested thatJapanese artists must be guided by the aesthetic purity of the past ratherthan the vulgar present: "Ryokan, who shook off the modern vulgarity ofhis day, who was immersed in the elegance of earlier centuries … lived inthe spirit of these poems.… The profundity of religion and literature werenot, for him, in the abstruse" (JBM 65). Behind this description of Ryokanlies Kawabata's self-portrait: the twentieth-century author rejecting thevulgarity of a decadent present through immersion in the elegance oftraditional Japanese aesthetics. Speaking of his novel A Thousand Cranes(1959), Kawabata declared it "a negative work, an expression of doubtabout and a warning against the vulgarity into which the tea ceremonyhas fallen" (JBM 68). In this context "tea ceremony" may be seen as ametaphor for Japanese culture.

Kawabata's preference for the geido aesthetics of earlier writers makes itclear that he saw life in contemporary Japan as vulgar. Some critics haveobserved that he turned away from it. [9] Kawabata's declarationfollowing Japan's defeat in World War II that he would never write againreinforces such observations and suggests that the author interpreted thewar's outcome as a destruction of the potential of geido to merge nation,culture, and spirituality through art.

Kawabata did write again, of course, but his fiction now warned againstthe vulgar intrusion of Western culture into Japanese life. These warningssometimes appear as the insertion of foreign elements into momentsfocused on Japanese tradition. The Sound of the Mountain, whose themecontrasts the animism of Japan's Shinto past with life in the fragmentedand vulgar present, is set near Tokyo, where the daily routine of theprotagonist, Shingo, immerses him in the conditions of life in acontemporary industrial city while his traditional house and the mountainthat speaks to him provide a cultural refuge. The ambiguous animism ofthe mountain-evoking the traditional Japan of Myoe and Dogen-coexistswith Shingo's daily business existence in modern Tokyo, where Shingo'sson is having an affair with his secretary. This contemporary settingserves as a metaphor for the intrusion of foreign elements into Japaneselife and contributes to the novel's mono no aware or melancholy tone.

Beauty and Sadness begins with Oki Toshio traveling to Kyoto by expresstrain on December 29 in an undefined year, perhaps the late fifties orearly sixties, in order to participate in the ceremony of the New Year'sbells, whose "lingering reverberations held an awareness of the old Japanand of the flow of time." [10] During the trip, an American couplephotograph Mount Fuji as the train passes. Mount Fuji's status as a sacredmountain creates a severe contrast with the superficial act of theAmerican tourists, who see the mountain as a mere photographic objectto be venerated for its crude aesthetic rather than its sacred spiritualessence. When Oki arrives in Kyoto he does not go to a traditionalryokan, but straight to the Miyako Hotel, one of the better Western hotelsin Kyoto. The discordant note sounded by Oki's preference for a non-Japanese hotel during a trip to recover the "old Japan" creates aninescapable irony and reveals a degree of ambivalence in his quest torecover tradition. Both incidents are projections of Kawabata'sconservative artistic and cultural attitude and create ironic juxtapositionsthat serve as moral warnings against the decadence into whichcontemporary Japanese culture has fallen.

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While the Kyoto of Beauty and Sadness may boast Japan's mosttraditional cultural environment, the novel reads less like an attempt torevisit traditional Japan than a story concerned with the tangled web ofrelationships between Oki, his wife, his former mistress, and the childrenof these relationships. In the course of the novel, Oki's son has an affairwith the young protégée of Oki's former mistress and drowns in amotorboat accident on Lake Biwa. Despite the novel's traditional titlewhich proclaims a principle of Japanese art-only that which is sad ortragic can be truly beautiful-its subject is infidelity and involves theintrigues of unrequited love, and the setting could be any moderncountry. Motorboat accidents, fast trains, Western-style hotels, cafés andcoffee shops, even the suggestion of a lesbian relationship between Oki'sformer mistress and her young protégée all give the novel acontemporary feeling. Beauty and Sadness is an elaborate presentationof the tragic consequences of life in a tainted culture, making the novelyet another "negative work," a powerful artistic expression of thedecadence of postwar life in a battered nation.

But the moment responsible for Snow Country was the prewar 1930s,Japan's modern Nationalist period, when the fervor for tradition andcultural unity became intense. This historical moment, in contrast with thesixties era that produced Beauty and Sadness, was permeated by"government efforts at national spiritual mobilization." [11] The directeffect on art and culture of this spiritual mobilization may be seen in thetranslation project involving The Manyoshu, whose more than 4,500poems were compiled during the eighth century. Begun in 1934, the sameyear that saw the publication of the first part of Snow Country, [12] theproject marked the first attempt by Japanese scholars to produce anEnglish translation of The Manyoshu. As the introduction indicates, theproject arose out of the need to assert traditional Japanese culture andthe superiority of Japan's organic social structure against encroachinginfluences from the West: "But filial piety [and by extension devotion toculture, nation, and emperor], so sincere, intense and instinctive asshown in the Manyo poems is not likely to be duplicated by any otherpeople and under any other social order." [13] According to DonaldKeene, the spirit of The Manyoshu, which was republished in 1940, was"constantly invoked by literary men" during the war years between 1941and 1945 because certain works contained expressions of clan unity andtherefore a sense of filial obligation to country and emperor. [14] There isa spiritual condition in this appraisal, since Japan has always traced theorigins of both country and emperor to its mythological past.

What immediately strikes the reader of Snow Country is that the storytakes place in Niigata Prefecture, away from Tokyo, the city thatrepresents in the Japanese mind all that is modern and Western inJapanese culture. "Tokyo is Japan, but Japan is not Tokyo" the sayinggoes, with the obvious implication that visitors wanting to know the "real"Japan must venture into rural areas. These form the setting ofKawabata's novel, which, not so coincidentally, was also the home ofRyokan, who "lived his whole life in the snow country," as Kawabatanoted enthusiastically in his Nobel speech (JBM 64). The two majorcharacters of the novel are the Tokyo visitor Shimamura and the snow-country native Komako, who says at one point in the novel, "Tokyopeople are very complicated. They live in such noise and confusion thattheir feelings are broken to little bits." [15] Komako's feelings are intactand vibrant, unlike those of Shimamura, the Tokyo refugee she isdestined to love.

The novel's snow-country setting is a northerly region of the main islandof Honshu in what is known as the reverse side of Japan, the area closeto the Japan Sea that is swept by cold winds from Siberia during thewinter. Whereas Tokyo embodies Japan's contemporary, industrial,Eurocentric energies, the reverse side of Japan represents the Japan ofunbroken tradition, of life close to nature, life rich with aesthetic andspiritual potential far removed from the bustle of life in the twentiethcentury. In the Japanese mind the region evokes the shadowy cold ofwinter, which makes it the perfect embodiment of yugen. Lesscomplicated by Western intrusions into the story than The Sound of theMountain, Beauty and Sadness, The Lake, and some of Kawabata's shortstories, Snow Country embodies the innate spirituality of Dogen and thesevere beauty of Myoe. Begun during a time of hope, when recovery oftradition seemed possible, the novel epitomizes Kawabata's twentieth-century triumph over what he described in reference to A ThousandCranes as "the vulgarities into which the tea ceremony has fallen" (JBM68).

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The novel's setting recalls Myoe's poem on the winter moon in which thatwhich is foregrounded in the poem becomes the spartan expression of allthings not seen-summer, grass, trees, and close friends and fellowhuman beings-forming a literary counterpart to the traditional sumieinkwash drawing. Rendered in monochrome black ink on a white or palebackground, sumie drawings contain three planes: a clear foreground, amidground, and a distant background, "which fades into the mystery anddepth of enveloping pictorial space." [16] The transitions among theplanes occur in "an atmospheric haze of concealing mists and vapors ...further enhancing the quality of yugen in its sense as 'hidden depths.'"[17] This spartan art evokes in the Japanese mind a rich sense of unitywith those things not expressed, both cultural and spiritual, and becomesan embodiment of the opposite of itself. Taken to an extreme, this artisticconcept suggests in the empty character of Shimamura precisely thosethings he lacks and those things missing in the austere, snowy region thatserves as the novel's setting. Rather than being precisely defined andenumerated, however, that which is missing, as in the sumie drawing,must remain intuitive and ephemeral, though one would naturally expecta Japanese reading audience to agree, at least to some extent, on what ismissing, since geido merges spirituality and culture.

Kawabata's use of geido as a principle of the novel's development, andthe intricate layering of some of its cultural conditions, creates forreaders a refined cultural ritual similar to the tea ceremony. YukioMishima recognized this principle in the introduction to Kawabata'scollection The House of Sleeping Beauties and Other Short Stories, wherehe noted that in the works of great writers, there are those whosemeaning is culturally obvious, and "we might liken them to exoteric ...Buddhism. In the case of Mr. Kawabata, Snow Country falls in [this]category." [18] Mishima was referring to the novel's merging of culture,religion, and aesthetics as an expected and predictable characteristic ofJapanese art, especially the art of the Master intended for Japanesereaders. Such readers would instantly recognize that the love affairbetween Shimamura and Komako is both a literary allusion to Tanabata,a festival from mythology that celebrates the story of the Oxherd and theWeaver Maid, and an expression of mono no aware, defined byMackintosh in a reference to Snow Country as "the pathos of things, thesadness of their transience," a Buddhist concept at the heart of Japaneselife and thought. [19]

Symbolized by the cherry blossom, which flowers for a brief moment thenfades, impermanence defines the relationship between Shimamura andKomako. Both know their affair is doomed from the start: the Japanesemale visits hot springs more for momentary relief from the monotonouspatterns of his organized life at home than to discover anything of lastingvalue or importance. [20] Shimamura is no different, and both he andKomako know why Shimamura visits each year. Their mutual awarenessthat the affair is fated to flower only briefly casts over the story a feelingof recurring poignancy, or mono no aware. But the love affair becomes aforeground vehicle for the expression of deeper cultural perceptions.Paradoxically, the transitory love affair between Shimamura and Komakoreinforces a sense of cultural unity, particularly in Japanese readers, whowould be expected to grasp Kawabata's aesthetic motives.

Tanabata is a national festival celebrated on the seventh day of theseventh month every year. Though the myth was originally Chinese, itfound its way into Japanese cultural mythology and became such anestablished feature of the literary landscape of early Japan that 120songs about it found their way into The Manyoshu.

The story is simple. The Oxherd star and the Weaver Maid star love eachother so much that they are constantly together and neglecting theirduties. So the Ruler of Heaven separates the two young stars: they willexist for eternity on opposite sides of the Heavenly River, or Milky Way,being allowed to meet one day a year, the seventh day of the seventhmonth. The ubiquitous references to the Milky Way in the last chapter ofthe novel and Shimamura's once-a-year visit to Komako's snow-countryvillage, with his side trip to the Chijimi cloth weaving region famous for itsweaver maidens, reinforce the novel's connection to this traditional myth.

The allusion to the Tanabata myth in Shimamura's side trip to Chijimi,and the connection between it and the love story of Shimamura andKomako, suggest that the world of Shimamura and Komako retains itsancient mythological roots: "the land of Chijimi [symbolically the land ofweaver maidens] was very near this [Komako's] hot spring," writesKawabata (SC 125). But Shimamura is disillusioned by Chijimi. Seeking

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the ancient cloth-weaving villages and weaver maids engaged in theirpersonal weaving rituals, he finds instead villages mostly deserted, wherean old woman smiles knowingly at his suggestion that the maidens of thevillage might occupy themselves during the winter by weaving Chijimicloth. Shimamura remembers that his guidebook had told him thatweaving cloth in the old way was impractical and too labor-intensive formodern times, and during his visit he thinks about leaving Komako.Chijimi predicts the novel's final outcome as Shimamura, disillusioned bythe intrusion of the contemporary industrial present into this isolated ruralenvironment, transfers his disillusionment to the affair with Komako.When he returns to Komako's village the end of their relationship is near.But it is not a final, existential end, for even as Shimamura's connectionto Komako and her snow-country village is terminating, Shimamura isbeing spiritually absorbed into the region of the snow country, where"generation after generation of his ancestors had endured the longsnows" (SC 128).

His absorption is so intense that it becomes a religious experience, aWay, in which, as he loses connection with Komako's material world, hefinds himself drawn up into the Milky Way with the sparks of the cocoonwarehouse fire that ends the novel: "The sparks spread off into the MilkyWay, and Shimamura was pulled up with them. As the smoke driftedaway, the Milky Way seemed to dip and flow in the opposite direction"(SC 139). Shimamura stumbles, and Kawabata ends the novel withShimamura's head falling back and the Milky Way flowing down insidehim with a roar (SC 142).

In the last few pages of the novel, references to the Milky Way occurnineteen times. While it is easy to see the symbolic connection betweenthe love affair and the Tanabata myth, the ending seems too saturatedwith aesthetics, spirituality, and culture for these geido qualities to bemere coincidence. The Milky Way is often referred to in Japanesemythology as the Bridge of Heaven, the path taken to earth by thecountry's founding deities. Each mention of it in the novel tends to mergethe Tanabata myth with the spiritual origins of Japan's mythical past.These expressions are typical: "the Milky Way came down to wrap itselfaround the earth" (SC 136) or, referring to Shimamura, the Milky Way"like a great aurora flowed through his body to stand at the edges of theearth" (SC 137).

"Snow Country is perhaps Kawabata's masterpiece," writes Seidenstickerin the introduction to the novel's English translation. [21] And it is notincidental that both the setting and the story evoke the cultural, artistic,and spiritual sensitivities of the tea ceremony and become anembodiment of the traditional Japanese aesthetic principles designated bygeido. Snow Country's final scenes constitute both a rejection of thevulgar and decadent present and an apotheosis of geido, of Kawabata'sinsistent demand for the traditional Japanese unity of spirit, culture, andself through art.

Notes

[1] Andrew Feenberg, "Alternative Modernity? Playing the Japanese Gameof Culture," Cultural Critique 29 (1994-95): 111-14.Return to article

[2] Yasunari Kawabata, Japan the Beautiful and Myself, trans. EdwardSeidensticker (New York: Kodansha, 1968) 52. Subsequent referencesare to this edition and are cited in the text in parentheses with theabbreviation JBM.Return to article

[3] Steve Odin, "The Penumbral Shadow: A Whiteheadian Perspective onthe Yugen Style of Art and Literature in Japanese Aesthetics," JapaneseJournal of Religious Studies 12.1 (1984): 63.Return to article

[4] Gwen Boardman, "Kawabata Yasunari: A Critical Introduction," Journalof Modern Literature 2 (1971): 88.Return to article

[5] Paul St. John Mackintosh, "The Warm Heart of Japan's Snow Country,"The Contemporary Review 262.1527 (1993): 204.Return to article

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[6] Boardman 90.Return to article

[7] Mita Luz de Manuel, "Elements of Existentialism in Modern AsianFiction," Likhãa 11.2 (1989-90): 32.Return to article

[8] Odin 63.Return to article

[9] See Sidney DeVere Brown, "Yasunari Kawabata (1899-1972):Tradition Versus Modernity," World Literature Today 62 (1988): 379.Return to article

[10] Yasunari Kawabata, Beauty and Sadness, trans. Howard Hibbett(1961; rpt. New York: Knopf-Berkley, 1975) 2.Return to article

[11] Brown 376.Return to article

[12] Snow Country was published piecemeal between 1934 and 1947.Return to article

[13] The Manyoshu, trans. Nippon Gakujutsu Shinkokai (1940; UNESCOCollection of Representative Works-Japanese Series. New York: ColumbiaUniversity Press, 1965) lvi.Return to article

[14] Donald Keene, foreword, The Manyoshu v.Return to article

[15] Yasunari Kawabata, Snow Country, trans. Edward Seidensticker(1947; UNESCO Collection of Contemporary Works. New York: Knopf-Berkley, 1956) 99. Subsequent references are to this edition and arecited in the text in parenthesis with the abbreviation SC.Return to article

[16] Odin 79.Return to article

[17] Odin 79.Return to article

[18] Yukio Mishima, introduction, The House of the Sleeping Beauties,trans. Edward Seidensticker (New York: Ballentine Books, 1969) 7.Return to article

[19] Mackintosh 204.Return to article

[20] Edward Seidensticker, introduction, Snow Country 5.Return to article

[21] Seidensticker 8.Return to article