Mono no aware, Japanese.
Roughly pronounced: moh-noh noh ah-wah-ray.
Roughly translated: A wistful awareness of the impermanence or transience of things. [Source]
Cherry blossoms exemplify the Japanese mono no aware sensibility. The intense beauty lasts just a few days before disappearing. The short time blossoms are in season is a time for celebration.
Kyushu, southern Japan, March 2014. I hiked for a day with a young dancer from Sweden. Her plan was to travel slowly north with the cherry blossom. She started in March in southern Kyushu, and would end her journey in late April in northern Hokkaido where spring comes later. She was living in the moment: no onward ticket from Japan, no concern her meager funding from an arts organization might run out. Eventually, mono no aware would play out, there would be no more cherry blossoms, she would return to Sweden.
Chicago, August 2018. I rode an “L” train to Chicago’s West Loop. My plan was to see Banksy’s “The Untouchables” mural depicting a baby carriage rolling down a flight of stairs. I wanted to experience this art in the context of its neighborhood.
I thought I had found the right spot, but the mural was nowhere to be seen.
A hotel was under construction, permanently blocking the view of the mural. For a moment I was sad, but then realized the artistic deed had been done, and it was time to move on to the next thing. I don’t want to live in a world where culture is stagnant, preserved for ever in its present state.
Sapporo, September 2018. I rode to the end of the subway line then took a bus to Sapporo Art Museum’s wonderful sculpture garden. I enjoyed several pieces, but was on a mission to pay homage to one piece: Bikky Sunazawa’s “Four Winds.” I had read a book about his life, From the Playground of the Gods: the Life & Art of Bikky Sunazawa. Now, I wanted to see this installation.
Bikky was Ainu, the race indigenous to Hokkaido. Ainu culture is typically represented by museums showing artifacts from previous centuries, or gift shops stocked with Ainu wood carvings.
Ainu, as a current, evolving, cross-pollinating culture, does not get much play.
Bikky exemplifies an indigenous culture that is living. In keeping with Ainu traditions, his medium was carved wood, but he went well beyond the literal carvings produced in bulk for tourists seeking to clutter up their homes. He explored abstraction, and received some recognition in a life cut short by colon cancer.
As I expected, not much remains of the sculpture. Bikky knew that it would eventually return to nature.
A fence and cameras had been installed to discourage souvenir-hunters. An interpretive sign showed a photograph of the installation in its original form when it was installed in 1986.
Here’s what Bikky wrote in his private notebook:
I make use of the trees in nature, grown without touching human hands, as materials. Thus, they are living things. It’s quite natural that living things will atrophy and decay. I (as an artist) will reconstruct them anew–giving them a new life with a new form.
Bikky left instructions that nature should be allowed to finish his work.
Minneapolis, October 2018. It was time for our dining room chairs to find a new home. My partner had the chairs carefully bubble-wrapped, padded, and boxed. The shipper managed to transport them across much of the country before two chairs were crushed to matchwood on a loading dock.
Over the decades, these chairs had witnessed many significant meals with friends and family. We look back at those meals at holidays and other times with much happiness and gratitude: chairs we had loved, but now beyond repair, do not detract from that.
Mono no aware.
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