interiors of buildings from their adjacent gardens. By the nineteenth century, it described the pauses in action in Kabuki theatrical performances. Until the post-war period, it had never been used as an aesthetic term.
Soon after World War II, Kawai Hayao (1928–2007), Japan’s first Western-trained Jungian psychoanalyst, incorporated Buddhist values into his ideas about psychology, describing the key to understanding the Japanese psyche as a “hollow center,” a reference to the Buddhist concept of mushin (emptiness). Kumakura Isao, writing in 2007, equated Kawai’s concept with the word ma, although he does not make it clear if Kawai actually used the word.42 Architect Isozaki Arata is largely responsible for the current popularity of ma as an aesthetic trope, which began in the late 1970s following a major exhibition on modern Japanese design he organized, titled Ma: Space-Time in Japan.43 The exhibition situated ma within the context of other traditional Japanese aesthetic terms, among them sabi and suki discussed above, and presented it as a shorthand explanation for describing the “Japan-ness” of a wide variety of contemporary avant-garde Japanese performing, martial, and visual arts, music, fashion, and garden and architecture design.44 The exhibition explored ma in relation to the cosmology of kami, the unseen deities of Japan’s indigenous Shinto religion, and in the acting style and stage set of the stylized Nō theater. It is important to note though that in pre-modern times neither Shinto nor Nō theater was ever described with the word ma. Nō, for example, in traditional aesthetic terminology is always described as infused with the Buddhist spirit of yūgen (“mysterious beauty”), discussed further in Chapter 2).
Plate 1-42 Veranda of the Mani’in subtemple at Kongōji, Osaka Prefecture, 14th century. Photo: David M. Dunfield, 1991.
Plate 1-43 Prefectural Nō Theater, Kanazawa, Ishikawa Prefecture. Photo © Ishikawa Prefecture Tourist Association and Kanazawa Convention Bureau/© JNTO. Nō theater is characterized by the stylized dance movements and gestures of its actors, hypnotic music, recitation, and chanting, all set against a bare stage set featuring a lone pine tree. The interplay of these elements creates a sedate yet emotionally charged aura (see also Plate 2-15).
Plate 1-44 View of the Inland Sea from Mount Mikasa, Itsukushima. Photo: Patricia J. Graham, October 2006.
Isozaki explained that he chose ma as the exhibition’s unifying theme because the concepts behind it represent the foundation of almost all aspects of Japanese life. He saw it as a uniquely Japanese perception of spatial and temporal reality that resonated with contemporary theories of the universe as defined by quantum physicists who understand space and time not as separate categories but as interdependent dimensions.45 As Gian Carlo Calza has recently observed, this idea had first been suggested by Werner Heisenberg (1901–1976), the Nobel laureate theoretical physicist who pioneered the study of quantum mechanics. Heisenberg wondered if Japanese scientists’ great contributions to theoretical physics stemmed from philosophical ideas of the Far East.46 Calza also echoed Isozaki in his observations that “it is precisely this kind of aesthetic model—flexible, open, attentive to every change and variation, full of symbolic references and allusions, and not given to concretizing description—that encouraged the rapid advance of Japanese art into the avant-garde.”47
Plate 1-45 I ssey Miyake (b. 1938), Blouse and pants with laser-beam printed geometric design in graduated colors, 1977. Printed on cotton. Collection of Mary Basket, Cincinnati. Photo: Katy Uravitch, The Textile Museum, Washington, DC. This outfit was published in 1978 in a pioneering book on Miyake’s designs, Issey Miyake, East Meets West.48 Miyake was one of a number of prominent avant-garde contemporary artists and designers who contributed to the landmark 1978 exhibition about ma.
Plate 1-46 Jun Kaneko (b. 1942), Dango, 2006. One of a group of seven sculptures for the Water Plaza at the Bartle Hall Convention Center in Kansas City, Missouri. Glazed ceramic, height ca. 230 cm. Kaneko is famous for his large-scale, boldly glazed sculptures called dango, named after the Japanese word for “steamed dumpling,” that he fabricates with seemingly endless variations of scale and surface design. Kaneko has said that ma “defines his entire practice as an artist—as painter, sculptor, designer, ceramicist … a term that derives from what one might call the metaphysics of Shinto.”49
In 1933, at a time when Western-influenced modernity was beginning to exert profound influences on the Japanese way of life, novelist Tanizaki Jun’ichirō (1886–1965) wrote a short essay about what he considered the essential character of the Japanese aesthetic psyche. Titled In Praise of Shadows, the essay was only translated into English in 1977, and immediately became an inspiration to foreign enthusiasts of Zen-influenced Japanese aesthetics. Not surprisingly, Tanizaki’s essay was acclaimed at the same time the word ma came into fashion, because it describes aesthetics sympathetic with ma. In his essay, Tanizaki railed against the garishness of the electric light bulb and argued that Japanese objects and rooms possess a mysterious beauty dependent on their being visible only in spaces permeated with the diffused light of shōji screens or the flickering of candles or oil lamps. In short, he promoted an aesthetic centered on beauty emerging from the darkness of the void-like space of ma.
Plate 1-47 Writing table (bundai), Meiji period, late 19th century. Black lacquer on wood with gold sprinkled powder (makie) and engraved gilt bronze fittings, 14.4 x 63.8 x 36.4 cm. The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri. Gift of Mrs Jack Rieger in memory of Mrs Hortense P. Lorie, F76-30/1. Photo: Jamison Miller. In describing the beauty of Japanese lacquer, Tanizaki Jun’ichirō wrote that “lacquerware decorated in gold is not something to be seen in a brilliant light, to be taken in a single glance; it should be left in the dark, a part here and a part there picked up by a faint light. Its florid patterns recede into the darkness, conjuring in their stead an inexpressible aura of depth and mystery, of overtones but partly suggested.”50
Plate 1-48 Tokonoma alcove in the tea room at the Sesshūin subtemple, Tōfukuji, Kyoto. Tanizaki Jun’ichirō eloquently noted of these essential spaces in tea rooms that “Of course the Japanese room does have its picture alcove, and in it a hanging scroll and flower arrangement. But the scroll and the flowers serve not as ornament but rather to give depth to the shadows.”51
NŌTAN
THE DARK–LIGHT PRINCIPLE
Nōtan, the dynamic interaction between dark and light values in a two-dimensional image, is a Japanese aesthetic term wholly invented by modern-day Westerners, used mainly by artist educators and designers. The two Japanese words, “dark” and “light,” that comprise this term were never joined together as aesthetic terminology in Japan. However, it has been widely used in the international design community since the early twentieth century and therefore merits consideration. Arthur Wesley Dow (1857–1922; see page 121) was responsible for its initial wave of popularity. In the 1920s, artist Rudolph Schaeffer (1886–1988), then a professor of the California School of Fine Arts, began using it to teach design principles. Later, he founded the Rudolph Schaeffer School of Design in San Francisco, which was influenced by Asian aesthetics and philosophies. One of his students in the 1920s was artist Dorr Bothwell (1902–2000), who in
