From Fuzei to Arigato
8 ways Japanese philosophy has enlightened my writing
Fuzei awareness
Existing in Japan since ancient times, fuzei is a broad, somewhat ambiguous term that can’t be precisely defined. Directly translated to English it could mean: air, taste, elegance, hospitality or entertainment. Yet, fuzei is best understood as an aesthetic sense. And although it’s also a term sometimes used to indicate modesty, it is generally used to express the atmosphere and feeling that an object spontaneously evokes in a viewer.
It is the atmospheric difference between a nice, brand new clay pot and a clay pot that is imperfect, older, weathered, but that more elegantly ties the room together.
Before getting into the details, how did I broadly apply fuzei to my writing? By understanding what genre I was writing in, yes. But more situationally, creating an aesthetic niche within that particular genre or sub-genre, to give my writing that atmospheric appeal.
When I was at university I began exploring the Southern Gothic genre in short fiction — southern writers dealing with Gothic tropes of disturbed personalities and the grotesque. I applied fuzei then and decided on contouring the Southern Gothic tradition with my own short stories calling it Suburban Daylight Gothic — the dark, ominous Gothic tropes of disturbed personalities and the grotesque contrasted with the sunny disposition of daytime occurrences in contemporary suburban locals. It’s an aesthetic I still use in my screenwriting today.
Understanding fuzei helped me develop the specifics of an underlying sensibility that could also appeal to a general audience. No longer were my objects (poems, short stories, screenplays) sitting in a vacuum within the larger room of society extraneously, but the personalized objects began to link and harmonize with a specific area of society in a specific point in time. Lesson learned: understanding and applying fuzei awareness can help develop and harmonize aesthetics within a culture.
Wabi-sabi
The textbook definition of wabi is: a quality of austere and serene beauty expressing a mood of spiritual solitude, teaching of the three marks of existence, specifically transience, suffering, and absence of self-nature. It can also mean a beautiful work of art with a distinctive flaw that expresses the humanity of its creator. Likewise, in traditional Japanese aesthetics, wabi-sabi is a worldview centered on the acceptance of this imperfection and impermanence.
Some of the characteristics of wabi-sabi are asymmetry, roughness, simplicity, economy, austerity, modesty, intimacy and the appreciation of natural objects and the forces of nature.
This is how I incorporated some of these characteristics in my own writing.
Wabi-sabi shows the potential pleasure in properly displaying the irregularities and asymmetry of plot. I like to think of a screenplay as a poem in this affect. And compared to a ten hour investment in reading a book, it is. A free verse poem can have many unique movements and endings. Structuring a screenplay’s plot as if it were a poem opens the door to discovering individualized expression. Also, looking through this lens can lead to characters’ decisions that make up plot points endowed with poetic meaning. Usually this means that the plotting becomes not formulaic but irregular. Having fixed lengths to acts might seem well and good, but what if poetic plotting offers something much more nuanced and organic, though asymmetrical. In one screenplay I’ve written, All Five Horizons, the first half of the script runs like a regular screenplay, only to have the second half be one long symposium and final scene. The screenplay’s plotting and pace works in my opinion, but this was only discovered after the characters and the intricacies of their situations and decisions dictated it so.
Another wabi-sabi approach to this analogy of screenplay as poem is simply making use of the economy of my words. Making each word count and serve a purpose. It is important in a poem and is equally important in larger works.
How would did I evoke the intimacy of wabi-sabi? By applying its principals that lead to its characteristics and by being, well… intimate. To bring the screenplay as poem idea even closer, I’ve learned, through the study of great confessional poets, that more intimacy with an audience can be achieved by incorporating real life situations and details into my work. How can it be that poetry at large before the ’50s and ’60s was stinted by not freely integrating real life into art? I have no idea. Or rather I have an idea, it was hidden. That’s not to say there isn’t an artificiality in a confessional piece of art. But I do believe that screenwriting in the future will follow this trend.
Finally, wabi-sabi appreciates the forces of nature and the mood of spiritual longing and serene melancholy they can evoke. Solitude in nature is definitely a motif I see in my own writing. Having a character quietly contemplate his or her situation in and amongst the natural world, a desert, a beach, the ocean, etc., can give your scenes transitory scope and a place to breathe.
Atmosphere of age
This idea of atmosphere of age ties into fuzei’s tastes of beauty and wabi-sabi’s observance of nature’s processes on natural objects.
From my experience, the more I work on a piece the better it becomes. I liken it to a piece of fruit ripening on a branch. Writing projects that have been periodically worked on over the years cultivate this atmosphere of age and becomes, with improvements and time, ripe and ready to be received.
Mono no aware
Mono no aware is “a sensitivity to ephemera.” Simply put, the awareness of the transience of all things heightens the appreciation of their beauty and evokes a gentle sadness at their passing. It’s a bittersweet revelation.
Having a character achieve a goal or attain something they wanted could create a false ending and this epiphany. This is just one way to structure this phrase into your story.
In my screenplay crashingMTN, an early scene has the prisoner protagonist, Sturgill, on a transport bus silently gazing out of the bus window at a herd of brown cows at pasture, while another talkative inmate tries to prod him on why he’s being unresponsive. With an image and a sigh, the this scene sets up expectations, while also having the protagonist come to terms with the passing of his former life of freedom.
“Triple-win”
“Sanpo yoshi” or “three-way satisfaction” is an old Japanese merchant’s philosophy of doing business with the satisfaction of both the seller and customer in mind, as well as how it benefits society at large.
As a writer my work may be cathartic and monetary, but asking what the individual reader and the collective audience can take away from the art to improve their well-being, aside from being purely entertained, is something to consider and just plain good business.
“Pointing and Calling”
This is really a technique. Japanese train conductors have found that they could reduce the number of accidents if they would simply make large gestures and speak out their status at certain indicators. This simple technique helps keep their focus and attention.
So for everyday life, I might point and call the different errands I have to do before I enter a room so that I wouldn’t forget my laundry load, the drink I wanted out of the fridge, and the table I meant to wipe down.
Taking it a step further, I’ve used this method to reach my writing goals. By pointing and calling and verbally taking the time to announce my daily or yearly writing goals to my friends and family, I’ve been more inclined to carry them out. It reinforces the importance and urgency of my goals with a level of accountability, focus, and self-awareness.
I arigato my work
Arigato means “thank you” in Japanese. In Japan, it is common practice for people to use an arigato money technique, where after any transaction, both large and small, one would whisper or say Arigato. Continually appreciating one’s money and its circular nature creates, in their minds, an increase flow of monetary gains.
How have I used this in my writing? Arigato, or appreciate, my work. Whenever I complete a piece of writing, both big and small, I take a little moment to cherish and appreciate what it is I accomplished. By doing this I am more inclined to share your work with others and continue productivity.
I learned this lesson the hard way. While I was in China teaching Business English at a finance and economics university, I lost a jump drive that contained the entire collection of my poetry and short stories I had written since university. I had switched laptops and didn’t find the time to transfer a majority of my life’s work before I lost the jump. I was so enthralled by the work I was doing at the time that I lost sight of my previous accomplishments. Similarly, I lost two chapbooks of poetry years later that I had not transcribed digitally. Regrettable, but I vowed to appreciate my future work more, by sharing, getting published, and taking the time to save it immediately. I now believe it is a writer’s obligation to allot just as much time and energy into sharing their material as they spend on creating it.
I hope you can incorporate some of these ideas into your writing. Salute.
