When Dee (www.deemallon.wordpress.com) posted on her blog about visiting the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston I was reminded of my unsuccessful effort to visit there on a day when it was closed. I wanted to go because I had read The Book of Tea, written in 1906 by Kakuzo Okakura to explain Japanese ways to Mrs. Gardner and her Western friends. Thinking of that prompted me to read it again and this is what came of it:
I have never been to Japan or studied the Japanese language. I have never attended a tea ceremony. My house and garden have no overtly Japanese decorative items and I only rarely use their motifs in my textile work. Still, there is something about Japanese aesthetics that calls to me strongly and I now recognize their influence on my tablesettings and general appreciation of beauty.
To even say this much is to call down derision from true adepts who would say that my appreciation comes from a shallow and ignorant place. The Japanese have been honing their aesthetic arts for centuries to an exquisite refinement that takes a lifetime to master. I am certainly missing a whole world of technical expertise, symbolic meaning and historical reference when I admire a beautiful kimono, graceful calligraphy or serene garden. Nonetheless, in my Western fashion I maintain the right to be moved by whatever appeals to me and take what I can from my own experience.
There are several things I especially like about Japanese art. One of the most important is their appreciation of domestic forms and daily life. Flower arrangements, gardens, ceramics and textiles are treated as artistic outlets as important and valuable as painting, sculpture and architecture. No facet of life is unworthy of consideration and care. They allow the sacred to shine through every moment, even the most mundane, and celebrate beauty in every endeavor.
Another touchstone is the Japanese affinity to nature. They refer to it constantly in art and ceremony, keeping natural motifs and themes in the forefront of their artistic vocabulary. The seasons are especially resonant for them and figure prominently in their poetry and symbolism, playing innumerable variations on the universal experience of change, death and renewal. Their acute appreciation of the power of the seasonal round always strikes a feeling of melancholy gratitude in me for the ephemeral, reliable gifts of earth. We all participate in the eternal becoming and dissolution of life, and the use of seasons as shorthand for that experience takes us straight into the heart of our own being.
A third appealing element of Japanese culture is the Zen-based concept of mindfulness. To me that means heightening my awareness of the moment and all that it entails. I don't think I will ever be able or want to lay aside past and future completely, but stopping as often as I can to savor what is happening now helps me connect to my own existence in a deeper way. Also, when I tune into the details around me I am motivated to make that moment as beautiful and satisfying as I can, although accepting what is no matter how messy is satisfying too and probably more Zen.
Table setting helps me translate these Japanese gleanings into my own life. As our culture becomes unmoored from traditional forms of community I think we need to pause occasionally, step out of our rush into the future and join with each other for the time it takes to eat a meal. This is a small, domestic act within the power of most people, not monumental but worthy of such attention as we can bring. Making an oasis for this to occur, invoking the natural world from which we and our sustenance come and concentrating our attention upon being together is the easiest formula I know to make people (including myself) feel secure, valuable and loved. Thanks Japan.
P.S. Marti's comment reminds me of an old article about the Japanese aesthetic of shibusa, published in House Beautiful magazine many years ago. There was no attribution to any author, but it is taken from an interview with the famous father of the Japanese craft movement, Soetsu Yanagi. I copied it and offer it here for you. Download House Beautiful article