Here and there in the world’s first known written novel, The Tale of Genji [Genji Monogatari], there are moments of pause and reflection to breathe in the “thisness” of the moment, its “mononoaware” (literally, how it is with the things around us). Other times the sentiment is not stated in the lines of the story, but rather it is present somehow in between the lines, like a sort of gentle sigh. The early scholar of Japanese language, history, and philosophy, MOTO-ORI Norinaga (d. 1801) brought the long ago writings of Murasaki Shikibu, the Genji’s author, into wider discussion and scrutiny and celebration. Part of the renewed interest in the words and ideas was the book’s masterful responsiveness to the tangible spaces and places around each person, its pathos, its Mono-no-aware.
This photo is from a walk through the back lanes late one morning during the first part of March in the city credited with Shikibu’s composition, today called Echizen-city, and hosting a national TV drama series in 2024 of the time of Genji. The growing springtime sunshine angles into the house’s courtyard, visible through the open garage door that fronts onto this lane. Once the light touches the walls and ground, part of it bounces indirectly onto the smooth cement of the garage, illuminating the tidy interior in which everything has its place; all is in order and streamlined minimalism keeps clutter at bay.
In no way is the scene designed to delight passers-by or to show off somehow. And yet, the light and the elements in this view all seem to invite the viewer to pause and acknowledge that there is some unpretentious, unadorned “thisness” about the place. There is a hint of Mono-no-aware going on: things just are as they are, not trying to be something different, but content in being just so. By contrast, so much else about one’s day or the longer arc of one’s decades (author Oliver Burkeman calls the human span, “4000 Weeks, time management for mortals” in his book by this title) involves a front stage and back stage; some things fully intended to be seen and judged by others as a kind of social performance and other things fully intended not to be seen by others or judged in any way. Located in between these two extremes sits “mono-no-aware,” things neither meant to be shown off, nor meant to be hidden from the eyes of strangers or friends. Those spaces and places “just are as they are.” Maybe the modern ambivalent phrase, “it is what it is,” rhymes with the writings of Murasaki Shikibu from 1000 years ago in this city.
