The “love of nature” or “harmony with nature” has almost become a cliché in characterizing the Japanese cultural tradition. According to a commonly held view, this attitude is reflected in the sensitivity to four seasons, which informs both artistic practices and people's daily lives. However, Shirane sheds new light on this otherwise well-trodden field.
Shirane first establishes that the Japanese culture of four seasons is a historical construction rather than a reflection of Japan's climate and topography. With detailed analyses of Nara and Heian poetry, he demonstrates how the culture of seasonality was established by the Heian aristocrats, whose urban life was permeated by what he calls “secondary nature.” This vision of nature consisted of aesthetically appealing slices of nature, such as cherry blossoms and warblers, and was experienced through poetry, painting, gardens, architecture, and kimono. This strictly aesthetic tradition excludes unwelcome aspects of nature, such as severe weather and wild animals, as well as consideration of nature's practical significance.
Each item of secondary nature came to represent a particular season through a repeated reference in Heian court poetry. Furthermore, a specific locale became associated with a particular seasonal beauty, establishing the tradition of utamakura (poetic places). These associations became codified and superseded any observable facts that might contradict them. Familiarity with these literary conventions was expected of the cultured and learned, a group first limited to aristocrats, but later extended to warriors and Buddhist priests, and finally to common folks in the Edo period.
Shirane then introduces two parallel traditions that generally have been neglected in the prevailing discourse of seasonal culture. One is the satoyama (village mountain) tradition, often recorded in folk tales, which evolved among common folks in rural areas, away from the court-dominated urban center. In contrast to the aristocrats’ distanced aesthetic appreciation with a spectator's attitude, satoyama people's experience was shaped by their practical and firsthand engagement with nature. As a result, this tradition included things absent from court literature, such as wild animals, as well as the need to appease wild nature that had to be destroyed for livelihood.
Another tradition that developed in contrast to seasonal culture is the appreciation of natural objects noted for their trans-seasonality and longevity, such as pine, bamboo, turtle, and crane. These came to be celebrated for their talismanic value and were used in various rituals for auspicious occasions.
The most exciting aspect of Shirane's discussion addresses the coevolution of these three strands of Japanese nature aesthetics and their syncretic synthesis during the Edo period. These strands converged in popular arts, which engaged people from all walks of life: haikai, senryū, kyōka, woodblock prints, and tea ceremony. These artistic genres were accessible and appealing to the general populace, as indicated by the inclusion of mundane objects and activities from their everyday life, such as food, pesky insects, and bodily functions. Furthermore, various provincial places were designated as poetic places, all in an effort “to break out of the yoke of capital-centric discourse” (p. 208). However, Shirane argues, the possibility and effectiveness of popularizing the heritage once monopolized by the cultural elites presupposed the pervasiveness of classical literary and aesthetic vocabulary throughout the Edo society.
Shirane further points out an intriguing twist in the transmission of seasonality aesthetics. Although it was waka of the classical period and court culture that established this aesthetic, its modern descendant, tanka, became “a vehicle for the avant-garde” with “no restrictions on diction and content” (p. 216). It was rather haiku, which “had begun as an anti-establishment genre,” that became “the guardian of the culture of the four seasons” (p. 216) with its required inclusion of a kigo (season word) from an extensive list.
Although poetry is considered the primary purveyor of seasonal aesthetic sensibility, Shirane provides a wealth of examples from other artistic media and people's activities: visual arts, pattern design, tea ceremony, flower arrangement, food, architecture, and seasonal festivals. With a detailed text accompanying each image, this multidisciplinary and richly illustrated treatment greatly enhances the discussion. Also helpful are the largely Japanese sources, both primary and secondary, that Shirane cites. For those readers who are familiar primarily with works translated or written in English, his extensive references from Japanese works provide a wealth of resources.
There are, however, two things that would have enhanced the discussion even more. First, even for readers fluent in Japanese, there are several terms for which the kanji are not evident. The “Index of Seasonal and Trans-Seasonal Words and Topics” (pp. 271–87) would have especially benefited from the addition of the original orthography.
Second, the ideological and political dimension of “nature” has become a contested domain not only in Japanese history but also in nature studies in general. Shirane describes “the ideology of the four seasons” codified by Heian aristocrats as “ultimately a celebration of imperial rule” (p. 54). According to him, Heian waka anthologies “attempted to create the illusion that both time and space . . . were brought to order around the sovereign and the imperial court and were held in harmony through poetry” (pp. 207–8). Furthermore, he points out that the satoyama tradition also engaged in “systematic representations of nature” that were “used to aid against unpredictable threats” and “to bring a sense of harmony to an otherwise tumultuous world” (p. 131). Finally, he observes that “the extensive cultural seasonalization and the pervasive presence of secondary nature may have dulled the sense of urgency with regard to conservation and the need to save the environment” (p. 219). I found these observations to be thought provoking, but their discussion rather cursory. Further explorations of these points will benefit not only Japan studies but also nature discourse and environmental studies in general.
While nature appreciation dominates Japanese aesthetics, it is only during the last few decades that nature aesthetics became established within Western aesthetics, which had been focused almost exclusively on fine arts. In light of this recent development in the Western aesthetic discourse, the discussion in this book should also appeal to the aesthetic discourse in general.
