Yugen other than 幽玄 ?

[Kevin Kirton]

In a new (2021) book by Steve Biddulph is this line:

"The Japanese have a word just for the feeling when you discover a waterfall in a forest: yugen."

Which word is this? At the moment, my theory is that he has misread or misheard a description of 幽玄 but I thought I'd ask the honyakkers here (hisashiburi everyone).

Any other ideas?

All I can find is the same line in his book on Google Books.

And lines like this:

"Perhaps the most well known description of yugen was given by Motokiyo Zeami, a Japanese playwright from the 14th c. He explained it as: "To watch the sun sink behind a flower clad hill. To wander on in a huge forest without thought of return. To stand upon the shore and gaze after a boat that disappears behind distant islands. To contemplate the flight of wild geese seen and lost among the clouds."

https://www.andesignkyoto.com/blog-windpines/tag/japanese+garden

Kevin Kirton

Canberra, Australia

[Warren Smith]

Wow. Hard question!

 

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[Herman]

幽玄 is the word in question.

Herman Kahn

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[Motohiro Kojima]

Kevin Kirton様

漢字は、「幽玄」で間違いないと思います。

「幽玄」という言葉は、風景に限定されるものではなく、文学・絵画・芸能・
建築などによっても表現されます。
私の印象では、「幽玄」とは、特定の「物」ではなく、そういったものを
見たり読んだりした時に、私たちの心の中に感じられるある種の「感覚」
あるいは「心の状態」であるような気がします。
「わび」・「さび」にも近いものがあるようにも思います。

「幽玄」を言葉で説明するのは、結構難しいですね。

2021.07.22 11:34:43
===================================
小島基弘 <mthr...@imoduru.net>

[Kevin Kirton]

Interesting, maybe I'm understanding the English differently from you, Hermann?

When I read the sentence "The Japanese have a word just for the feeling when you discover a waterfall in a forest: yugen."

I interpreted it to be saying "yugen" is specifically for that situation (i.e. waterfall and forest), not in a "such as" sense, but specifically for that situation. Like a specific Inuit snow word.

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[Rene]

On Thu, Jul 22, 2021 at 9:44 AM Kevin Kirton <kpki...@gmail.com> wrote:

In a new (2021) book by Steve Biddulph is this line:

"The Japanese have a word just for the feeling when you discover a waterfall in a forest: yugen."

Which word is this? At the moment, my theory is that he has misread or misheard a description of 幽玄 but I thought I'd ask the honyakkers here (hisashiburi everyone).

I just asked my Japanese family, and none of them know this word in this context. How old that quote?

Rene von Rentzell

[LAURIE BERMAN]

Japanese culture appropriated for pop psychology.

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[Dale Ponte]

Promiscuous semantics hand in glove.

DP

[Patricia Pringle]

幽玄 is a word that becomes richer or poorer depending on how it is used. I think it is the cornerstone of the aesthetics of Zeami Motokiyo, the founder to Noh Theatre. He describes yugen in several different ways in his works, but I prefer “like snow piled in a silver bowl.” This is a nod to the Chinese Zen artist Baling Haojian’s “Snow in a Silver Bowl” (c. 950). In the story, a monk asked Baling, “What is the school of Kanadava?”The answer: Like snow piled in a silver bowl.

In the Edo period, the aesthetics of Noh shifted from the Warrior plays to the plays about noble women. The women’s plays featured subtle movements and moments of deep, mysterious stillness (yugen). I have heard that the emphasis on yugen was because these plays were easier for samurai amateur noh performers to master, rather than plays with more movement.

Patricia Pringle

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[Kevin Kirton]

Hmmm... this reminds me of the "I love you" = "the moon is blue" Soseki thread* that fascinated me for weeks on Honyaku about 20 years ago.

But back to this "yugen" one. What I'm now interested in is how others interpret the word "just" in this sentence from a 2021 book:

"The Japanese have a word just for the feeling when you discover a waterfall in a forest: yugen."

I interpreted this "just" to mean specifically and only this situation, which would exclude situations such as watching "the sun sink behind a flower clad hill" and a "flight of wild geese seen and lost among the clouds" and other examples given for 幽玄

My theory was that the author had come across an example used to describe "yugen" and had mistakenly thought it to be specifically that single situation. And I imagined that this mistake would subsequently be quoted and multiplied via the internet so that in five years time whenever a writer wanted to give an example of tellingly specific words or words that do not exist in English without using schadenfreude (again), they would use "yugen," that amazing Japanese word that is limited strictly and exclusively to the feeling a person has when they come across a waterfall in a forest. If the writer were to be questioned about their source for this, they would say "I heard it at a party, or maybe saw it in a meme" and dismiss it as a small error, but the multiplication and amplification of this incorrect yugen would continue.

I thought I might contact the author/publisher and correct the mistake before this happens, but now I doubt my interpretation of his sentence. How about others?

I was going to suggest to the author that perhaps "skinship" would be a better choice, even though it is much more recent and derived from English words, it certainly is specific and Japanese, and it's a word I don't think we had in English before.

Interested to hear how others interpret "just" here.

*Can't find the old Soseki thread in the archives at the moment, but about 20 years ago I did contact a Japanese author about this "I love you = the moon is blue" story about Soseki. The author couldn't give me a reference for this story and to this day, even though that story is all over the internet, I've never seen any proof that Soseki said it. Could be wrong (again).

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[li...@letstalktranslations.com]

> But back to this "yugen" one. What I'm now interested in is how others interpret the word "just" in this sentence from a 2021 book:

> "The Japanese have a word just for the feeling when you discover a waterfall in a forest: yugen."

 

Hi Kevin. I won’t pretend to know how the author intended it, but it could easily be read in two ways: “just = exactly ぴったり” and “just = only = のみ.” (I suspect, like you, that the author meant “only.”)

 

Michael Hendry, in Newcastle Australia

[Herman]

I think the sentence "The Japanese have a word just for the feeling
> when you discover a waterfall in a forest: yugen." implies that the
situation of discovering a waterfall in a forest would typically elicit
a particular feeling, which is referred to as "yugen", not that whatever
feeling one may experience in such a situation is by definition "yugen",
and thus, if some other situation elicits the same feeling, that would
be "yugen" as well, in an extended sense.

I don't actually agree with the author on this point, in that the
Japanese term yugen does not refer to a type of feeling but rather to a
type of quality of things, and I don't think that discovering a
waterfall in a forest is particularly (or at all) representative of a
situation that has such a quality. Judging by the quote from Motokiyo
Zeami which you cited, yugen is a quality of something that is subtle,
faintly seen as it disappears in the distance, and discovering a
waterfall in a forest does not seem to be analogous to this but rather
the opposite.

"To watch the sun sink behind a flower clad hill. To wander on in a huge
forest without thought of return. To stand upon the shore and gaze after
a boat that disappears behind distant islands. To contemplate the flight
of wild geese seen and lost among the clouds."

On the other hand, the term has been used in English - in the context of
Zen, and more recently, forest bathing, where you would go into the
forest to some body of water to "get your yugen on" - in a sense that
represents a type of desirable experience or feeling, and based on this,
I think it can be concluded that the author's "yugen" is 幽玄.

Herman Kahn

[Patricia Pringle]

This must be as interpreted by a non-Japanese. Have you ever walked in a forest in Japan? Discovering waterfalls (or brooks or running creeks) is not that unusual. Yugen describes a rare aesthetic experience, not a common one. I recently had a job editing a brochure written for a Japanese-themed exhibit in the US. So I checked  the terms and descriptions used in the brochure very carefully. I was shocked at how mistaken interpretations and concepts take on a life ot their own in the internet. Something sounds good and gets copied and forwarded and repeated (usually without crediting the original author, actually sometimes it is not even possible to tell who thought up the nonsense in the first place). The more they are repeated, the more they seem to become the gospel truth.

Patricia

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