{"id":1672,"date":"2024-01-18T11:34:30","date_gmt":"2024-01-18T02:34:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newsletter.nichibun.ac.jp\/?post_type=messages&p=1672"},"modified":"2025-02-13T10:50:10","modified_gmt":"2025-02-13T01:50:10","slug":"mujo-as-perceived-through-the-five-senses","status":"publish","type":"messages","link":"https:\/\/newsletter.nichibun.ac.jp\/en\/messages\/1672\/","title":{"rendered":"Muj\u014d as Perceived through the Five Senses"},"content":{"rendered":"

I am engaged in comparative research on muj\u014d<\/em> (impermanence) with a focus on Japanese and Persian literature, and have been thinking about it primarily in a temporal context. By this I mean both muj\u014d<\/em> in the long term, the transience of human life, for instance, and muj\u014d<\/em> over shorter spans of time, like that which people feel over the course of their own lives.<\/p>\r\n

However, prompted by a passage in Japanese literature on muj\u014d<\/em>, and by a passage in the Rubaiyat, by the Iranian poet, Omar Khayyam, I decided to reconsider muj\u014d<\/em> from an entirely new perspective, that of the five senses.<\/p>\r\n

As is clear from Ry\u014dkan\u2019s resigned \u201cSome cherry blossoms fall and the remaining blossoms, too, are soon to fall\u201d, or the H\u014dj\u014dki\u2019s<\/em> \u201cThe flowing river never stops, and yet the water never stays the same,\u201d we are much more likely to perceive muj\u014d<\/em> visually. This does not mean, though, that the sense of sight monopolizes our awareness of muj\u014d<\/em>. For example, the instant melting in the mouth of ch\u016btoro<\/em> tuna is an example of muj\u014d<\/em> perceived through taste, while the scent of flowers is muj\u014d<\/em> through the sense of smell, and the softness of a baby\u2019s skin is muj\u014d<\/em> through the sense of touch. What all of these have in common is that the sensation does not last.<\/p>\r\n

In the same vein, the opening passage of the Heike Monogatari<\/em>, \u201cThe sound of the Gion Sh\u014dja bells echoes the impermanence of all things\u201d (in Helen Craig McCullough's translation), is an example of muj\u014d<\/em> perceived through the sense of hearing.<\/p>\r\n

The sudden arrival of the news of someone's death is a universal recognition of impermanence, but to imagine bells, which likely did not exist, for Gion Sh\u014dja, and then to extract\u201cimpermanence\u201d from the sound of that bell is an idea that can only come from the Japanese, with their sensitivity to sound. I think the abundance of onomatopoeia in the Japanese language is not unrelated to this phenomenon. There is a Matsuo Bash\u014d poem that epitomizes haiku:
\u3000\u201cThe old pond;
\u3000A frog jumps in \u2014
\u3000The sound of the water.\u201d
This haiku makes sense only when associated with the onomatopoeic word \u201cpotan<\/em>.\u201d Unlike the Japanese, who associate muj\u014d<\/em> with the sound of the Gion Sh\u014dja bells, those who live in a Christian culture would not associate the sound of church bells with muj\u014d<\/em>.
An interesting difference in auditory perceptions of muj\u014d<\/em> emerges from the Heike Monogatari<\/em> compared with the Rubaiyat<\/em>. In the Heike Monogatari<\/em>, one can understand that muj\u014d<\/em> reverberates with the ringing of the bells; by contrast, one finds this description of muj\u014d<\/em> in the Rubaiyat<\/em>: \u201cThe splendid palace of past ages is now a ruin, and the drums have ceased to sound.\u201d In ancient Iran, drums were beaten whenever the king left the palace. The depiction of a ruined palace, no matter how great its king, accords with the principle that \u201cThe prosperous must decline\u201d stressed in the Heike Monogatari<\/em>. However, muj\u014d<\/em> perceived through the absence of sounds formerly heard, such as drums, is the opposite of muj\u014d<\/em> perceived through hearing sound, like the sound of the bells of Gion Sh\u014dja.<\/p>\r\n

This is why muj\u014d<\/em> has become a subject of never-ending fascination for me.<\/p>\r\n

\"The

The ruins of the castle at T\u016bs, in northeastern Iran. Khayyam was no doubt inspired by similar sights. This photograph was probably taken by the Italian photographer Luigi Pesce in the mid-19th century.
Ruins of Tus, Khorasan, The Metropolitan Museum of Art<\/a>.<\/p><\/div>\r\n

 <\/p>\r\n

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