RECLAMACIÓN DE DAÑOS

The word yūgen consists of two components, the first of which, yū connotes faintness and insubstiantiality. The second component, gen refers to a dim or dark state caused by profundity. It thus implies a state beyond visibility, or unknowable depth.117 _{When Kino Tsurayuki wrote the preface to the Kokin-shū in the tenth}

century his ideal was that the kokoro (as the field from which poetry was formed) and the kotoba (as the external language of the poem) should be equal in the finished poem. This implied a balance between emotion and expression, “the correspondence of heart and words, the complimentary of fruit and flower”. Tsurayuki was critical of waka-poets whose work was lacking in kokoro, but he was also critical of poetry in which he saw the balance too strongly in favour of kokoro. Haga quotes Tsurayuki’s criticism of the poetry of Ariwara no Narihira (825–880) as “overflowing with heart, inadequate in words. It is like a faded flower drained of colour but with the scent still lingering”.118 _{As Haga states, it is apparent that the}

quality of lingering emotion that became known as yo-jō or the mysterious quality of

yūgen were not valued at this time.

Towards the end of the twelth century the poet Fujiwara Shunzei (1114–1204) came to regard yūgen as being “derived from the sense of longing for an unseen world, or sometimes a sense of wonder at the innate mystery of things.”119 _{He and other late-}

Heian Period poets like Fujiwara no Mototoshi linked the term yūgen with yo-jō resulting in the yo-jō yūgen style.

These waka-poets came to the understanding that the yo-jō (lingering emotion) style of writing allowed greater expression within the restricted, 31-syllable form. Haga states that for Shunzei:

116_{Ibid., 16.} 117_{Ibid., 27.}

118 _{Haga, “The Wabi Aesthetic Through the Ages.” 202.}

… superior poems were those that ‘over and above the diction (kotoba) and general configuration (sugata) of the verse’ are suffused with a lingering subtlety of thought and vagueness of emotion ‘like a trail of mist around spring flowers, or the cry of a deer before an autumn moon, or the scent of spring wind by a plum blossom hedge, or the patter of soft rain on autumn maple leaves among the crags.’120

Shunzei’s son Fujiwara no Teika wrote his Maigetsushu further proposing the greater importance of kokoro over kotoba, and by end of the twelfth century, Kamo no Chōmei (1155- 1216) came to suggest that poetic expressions that held kokoro

and kotoba in equal importance were inferior in aesthetic quality.121

By the early Muromachi period, the popularity of waka was declining, being replaced with the ‘linked verse’ poetry known as renga, and further development of the concept of yūgen occurred in the writings of Zeami (1363–1443) in the world of

nō. During the period of the Kitayama culture of the third Ashikaga Shogun, Yoshimitsu, Zeami developed a theory of the dramatic art of nō. Nōdeveloped out of the Yamoto saragaku tradition of mime when Zeami, and his father, the actor Kan’ami Kiyosugu incorporated the “singing and dancing styles of Ōmi saragaku

and dengaku (field music).”122

Zeami wrote about the spirit of nō in his Fushi Kaden, and The Nine Stages

(probably written before 1427). In The Nine Stages, Zeami defined nine stages of performance, divided into three groupings, the “Three High Flowers”, “The Middle Three Stages”, and the “Low Three Stages”. Each of the Zeami’s Nine Stages begins with an epigram and is followed by a short passage of explanation. The highest of the nine Modes, “Flower of Mysterious Singularity” (The highest of the “Three High Flowers”) starts with the quote of a phrase used in Zen texts,

At dead of night, the sun shines in Shinra…

Toyo and Toshihiko Izutsu write “the articulating function of the human mind as well as all that has been articulated dissolve into the abyss of darkness. However,

120 _{Haga, “The Wabi Aesthetic Through the Ages.” 203}

121_{Ibid., 204. As mentioned in Chapter 2, Chomei was unusual as, when confronted with reversals in}

his life retired to a hut in Hino (in 1204) and lived there until his death. He wrote Mumyōshō,

Hosshinshū, and Hōjōki living in reclusion, establishing what became known as sōan bungaku (grass hut literature) and helping to establish the concept of the grass hut which influenced the later development of the smaller tea house. Chomei’s hut was a one room structure 10 feet square and became a model for the tea house.

this abysmal darkness can be at the same time the brilliance of sunlight.”123

Therefore, the highest of Zeami’s “Three High Flowers”, the “Flower of Mysterious Singularity” corresponds with the aim of the ideal waka as an expression of the void, the emptiness, of the un-articulated kokoro that the waka poets were trying to express, and which was to be significant in the development of wabi. This is not the Western style voidfull of nothingness, but rather, a void brimming with potential.

The contemporary architect Kurokawa Kisho writes that, for Zeami, hana, the flower, was the life of nō. For Kurokawa, “Zeami’s aesthetic is a characteristically Japanese one of symbiosis that has much in common with the original meaning of

wabi.”124 _{Based on Zeami’s use of the word hana as peak of the aesthetic of nō,}

Kurokawa invents a new term hanasuki as a substitute for the word wabi, proposing that the original meaning of wabi has been distorted over time. I will explore this later in this chapter.