, literally "the

pathos Pathos (, ; plural: ''pathea'' or ''pathê''; , for " suffering" or "experience") appeals to the emotions and ideals of the audience and elicits feelings that already reside in them. Pathos is a term used most often in rhetoric (in which it is ...

of things", and also translated as "an empathy toward things", or "a sensitivity to

ephemera Ephemera are transitory creations which are not meant to be retained or preserved. Its etymological origins extends to Ancient Greece, with the common definition of the word being: "the minor transient documents of everyday life". Ambiguous in ...

", is a Japanese idiom for the awareness of , or transience of things, and both a transient gentle sadness (or

wistfulness Melancholia or melancholy (from el, µέλαινα χολή ',Burton, Bk. I, p. 147 meaning black bile) is a concept found throughout History of medicine#Greece and Roman Empire, ancient, medieval medicine of Western Europe, medieval and Lear ...

) at their passing as well as a longer, deeper gentle sadness about this state being the reality of life.

Origins and analysis

The idiom comes from

Heian period The is the last division of classical Japanese history, running from 794 to 1185. It followed the Nara period, beginning when the 50th emperor, Emperor Kanmu, moved the capital of Japan to Heian-kyō (modern Kyoto). means "peace" in Japan ...

literature, but was picked up and used by 18th century

Edo period The or is the period between 1603 and 1867 in the history of Japan, when Japan was under the rule of the Tokugawa shogunate and the country's 300 regional '' daimyo''. Emerging from the chaos of the Sengoku period, the Edo period was character ...

Japanese cultural scholar

Motoori Norinaga was a Japanese scholar of ''Kokugaku'' active during the Edo period. He is conventionally ranked as one of the Four Great Men of Kokugaku (nativist) studies. Life Norinaga was born in what is now Matsusaka in Ise Province (now part of Mie ...

in his literary criticism of '' The Tale of Genji,'' and later to other germinal Japanese works including the . It became central to his

philosophy of literature Philosophy and literature involves the literary treatment of philosophers and philosophical themes (the literature of philosophy), and the philosophical treatment of issues raised by literature (the philosophy of literature). The philosop ...

; he viewed it the main theme of ''The Tale of Genji''. His articulation was the result of well-established poetic readings of ''The Tale of Genji'' and the concept became central to his own; ''Genji'' was "instrumental" in the term's establishment. According to Norinaga, to "know" is to have a shrewd understanding and consideration of reality and the assortment of occurrences present; to be affected by and appreciate the beauty of cherry blossoms was an example of this knowledge provided by Norinaga. Japanese cultural scholar Kazumitsu Kato wrote that understanding in the Heian period was "almost a necessity for a learned man in aristocratic society", a time when it was a prominent concept.

Donald Richie Donald Richie (17 April 1924 – 19 February 2013) was an American-born author who wrote about the Japanese people, the culture of Japan, and especially Japanese cinema. Although he considered himself primarily a film historian, Richie also di ...

wrote that the term has "a near-Buddhistic insistence upon recognition of the eternal flux of life upon this earth. This is the authentic Japanese attitude toward death and disaster". Various other scholars have discussed the term.

Etymology

The phrase is derived from the Japanese word , which means "thing", and , which was a

expression of measured surprise (similar to "ah" or "oh"), translating roughly as "pathos", "poignancy", "deep feeling", "sensitivity", or "awareness". has seen multiple translations, such as "pathos of things" and "sensitivity of things"; the Latin phrase has also been invoked. Awareness of the transience of all things heightens appreciation of their beauty, and evokes a gentle sadness at their passing. Norinaga saw the state of being as the fundamental condition of the concept. The term has seen gradual change in its meaning, although since "the beginning it represented a feeling of a special kind: 'not a powerful surge of passion, but an emotion containing a balance".

In contemporary culture

is "one of the most well-known concepts in traditional literary criticism in Japan".

Yasunari Kawabata was a Japanese novelist and short story writer whose spare, lyrical, subtly shaded prose works won him the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1968, the first Japanese author to receive the award. His works have enjoyed broad international appeal a ...

was a considerable modern proponent of . Norinaga asserted that the feeling of may be so profound that allusions to

sense A sense is a biological system used by an organism for sensation, the process of gathering information about the world through the detection of stimuli. (For example, in the human body, the brain which is part of the central nervous system re ...

s, highlighting "the sound of wind or crickets, ... the colour of flowers or snow", would be the only apt expression. Notable

manga Manga ( Japanese: 漫画 ) are comics or graphic novels originating from Japan. Most manga conform to a style developed in Japan in the late 19th century, and the form has a long prehistory in earlier Japanese art. The term ''manga'' is ...

artists who use -style storytelling include

Hitoshi Ashinano is a Japanese manga artist. He is most noted for '' Yokohama Kaidashi Kikō'', for which he won the 2007 Seiun Award for Best Science Fiction Manga. Another notable work is ''PositioN''. Prior to his debut, Ashinano worked as an assistant to mang ...

, Kozue Amano, and

Kaoru Mori is a Japanese manga artist from Tokyo and the creator of the manga series ''Shirley'', '' Emma'', and '' A Bride's Story''. Many of her works are centered on female characters in the 19th century, such as a maid in Victorian Britain and a bride ...

. In

anime is Traditional animation, hand-drawn and computer animation, computer-generated animation originating from Japan. Outside of Japan and in English, ''anime'' refers specifically to animation produced in Japan. However, in Japan and in Japane ...

, both '' Only Yesterday'' by

Isao Takahata was a Japanese director, screenwriter and producer. A co-founder of Studio Ghibli, he earned international critical acclaim for his work as a director of Japanese animated feature films. Born in Ujiyamada, Mie Prefecture, Takahata joined Toe ...

and ''

Mai Mai Miracle is a Japanese animated film based on Nobuko Takagi's novelization of her autobiography, ''Maimai Shinko''. It was produced by the animation studio Madhouse, distributed by Shochiku, and directed by Sunao Katabuchi. The film debuted at the Locar ...

'' by

Sunao Katabuchi is a Japanese animation director, screenwriter, and storyboard artist. He is director of Contrail Co. Ltd. He has been a part-time lecturer at Nihon University College of Art since 2006, and a Project Professor at the college of Art of at the ...

emphasize the passing of time in gentle notes and by presenting the main plot against a parallel one from the past. By the 1970s, had been adopted in Japanese and English film criticism with noted attention towards the Japanese director

Yasujirō Ozu was a Japanese film director and screenwriter. He began his career during the era of silent films, and his last films were made in colour in the early 1960s. Ozu first made a number of short comedies, before turning to more serious themes in t ...

. Ozu was well known for creating a sense of , frequently climaxing with a character very understatedly saying , after a familial and societal

paradigm shift A paradigm shift, a concept brought into the common lexicon by the American physicist and philosopher Thomas Kuhn, is a fundamental change in the basic concepts and experimental practices of a scientific discipline. Even though Kuhn restricted ...

, such as a daughter being married off, against the backdrop of a swiftly changing Japan. Ozu has often expressed feelings by showing the faces of objects rather than the face of an actor. Some examples include two fathers contemplating the rocks in a "dry landscape" garden, and a mirror reflecting the absence of the daughter who has just left home after getting married.

Science fiction Science fiction (sometimes shortened to Sci-Fi or SF) is a genre of speculative fiction which typically deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts such as advanced science and technology, space exploration, time travel, parallel uni ...

author

Ken Liu Ken Liu (born 1976) is an American author of science fiction and fantasy. His epic fantasy series ''The Dandelion Dynasty'', which he describes as silkpunk, is published by Simon & Schuster. Liu has won Hugo and Nebula Awards for his short fi ...

's short story "" won the 2013

Hugo Award for Best Short Story The Hugo Award for Best Short Story is one of the Hugo Awards given each year for science fiction or fantasy stories published or translated into English during the previous calendar year. The short story award is available for works of fiction of ...

. Inspired by works like the science fiction manga , Liu sought to evoke an "aesthetic primarily oriented towards creating in the reader an empathy towards the inevitable passing of all things", and to acknowledge "the importance of memory and continuity with the past".

Akira Kurosawa was a Japanese filmmaker and painter who directed thirty films in a career spanning over five decades. He is widely regarded as one of the most important and influential filmmakers in the history of cinema. Kurosawa displayed a bold, dyna ...

's ''

I Live in Fear is a 1955 Japanese drama film directed by Akira Kurosawa, produced by Sōjirō Motoki, and co-written by Kurosawa, Shinobu Hashimoto, and Hideo Oguni. The film is about an elderly Japanese factory owner so terrified of the prospect of a nuclear ...

'' and Shohei Imamura's '' Black Rain'' have been associated with the term. The 2020 science fiction novel '' The Book of Koli'' has as a primary character an

artificial intelligence Artificial intelligence (AI) is intelligence—perceiving, synthesizing, and inferring information—demonstrated by machines, as opposed to intelligence displayed by animals and humans. Example tasks in which this is done include speech ...

named Monono Aware, a wordplay on .

Notes

References

External links

* from a Japanese culture class at

Ohio State University The Ohio State University, commonly called Ohio State or OSU, is a public land-grant research university in Columbus, Ohio. A member of the University System of Ohio, it has been ranked by major institutional rankings among the best pub ...