THERE IS a famous story in Japan about a man renowned for the magnificent chrysanthemums he cultivated. His fame reached even to the Imperial Palace and the emperor asked to see these remarkable flowers. Before the emperor arrived the man went into his garden and cut down his treasured chrysanthemums, leaving only one, the most beautiful, to delight the eyes of the monarch.

To foreigners, perhaps, this story needs explanation, but to the Japanese the point is immediately clear--the appreciation ofsomething beautiful is so important a human activity that there is nothing surprising in the destruction of hundreds of plants so that the emperor may enjoy the one flawless flower undistracted by lesser blooms. A friend once explained the matter to me. "Almost anyone," he said, "has at least some appreciation of art, but the Japanese have made an art of appreciation."

In Western society one is apt to feel that to be creative one must be active and have something to show for the effort--one must write or paint, compose music, or even be a good cook. But what of the people who read the books, see the pictures, hear the music or eat the cooking? Their sensitive and developed appreciation is a "creative" offering just as hard to come by and, to the Japanese at least, just about as valuable.

To a visitor in Japan this sense of appreciation lends a surprising and new perspective to life, a richness and unsuspected depth. An American Army wife told me about one of her most unexpectedly pleasant experiences in Tokyo. She was invited by a Japanese friend to attend the meetings of an "incense-smelling society." This group of Japanese women had employed an expert to instruct them, and gathered regularly to enjoy the fragrances of scented wood smoke--cedar, lime, verbena, plum and many more--learning their special characteristics, appreciating the subtle changes of quality in a piece of wood a hundred years old as contrasted with a fragment cut the day before. From these meetings my American friend came to understand a whole new approach to the pleasure and appreciation of daily living, to the smells, sounds, textures or sights that previously had not seemed worth her notice.

The Japanese have developed a deeply individual enjoyment of universally available pleasures. In Japan you might be invited to a moonviewing party, for instance. You watch the moon rise and no conversation is expected of you. It is assumed that your mind is fully occupied by watching the changing light the moon throws on gardens, countryside or rooftops. People recognize that your entire attention is needed to absorb the shifting shadows, the play of clouds across the moon, the growing luminosity of the night sky. Some houses, in fact, have a special "moon-viewing window," a treasured architectural feature silently expressing the value of the experience of profound appreciation of beauty.

The first snow has elicited countless poems and paintings in Japan and remains a celebrated occasion calling for the exercise of talents that, in the West, are too often considered passive rather than active. A woman in Kyoto made me realize the importance of this annual experience in her life. She had a small pavilion in her garden built to offer her the best view of the snow. She would sit there in silence with her friends, sipping a tiny cup of the special sake that the Japanese brew exclusively for snow-viewing. Beaten up with a raw egg, it is supposed to enhance your appreciation of the changed look of the land under snow. "After this," she said, "it is possible to continue with the memory in your head for the rest of the year."

These refinements of appreciation extend far beyond the accidental beauties of nature into the smallest details of one's daily life in Japan. If, for instance, you are invited to dinner you will see at the bottom of your bowl of consomme a slice of vegetable cut into some beautiful or fantastic shape. A hostess is as much complimented by the guests who say, "How beautiful!" and don't taste the soup as by those who say, "How delicious!" and eat it all.

If you make the most plodding purchase in a shop, you will see the salesman wrap and tie the package with a skill that makes it almost a work of art. When you write a formal letter your calligraphy will be as much appreciated as the actual message. All trifles, but nevertheless to the Japanese all potentially moments of beauty.

At certain seasons of the year your neighbours will probably invite you for an "airing of household treasures"--when whatever the family considers particularly beautiful will be displayed for a while to friends. You will drink tea and admire--with or without conversation, according to your wish--perhaps some ancient masks or unusually lovely kimonos, possibly some picture scrolls or pieces of brocade. Afterward it will all be packed away again, for the interior of a Japanese house is so carefully measured in its elegance that there is no place for a permanent display. A fine table, a picture, a vase of flowers, a couple of bright silk cushions--this is the extent of decoration in a Japanese room. The point is still the same: you can't appreciate something unless you allow your eye or your mind or your ear an undistracted concentration.

All this is not simply the expression of an over-fussy formalism. It is the recognition of the value of constant awareness, a sensitivity to even insignificant aspects of an ordinary activity or occurrence.
This approach is so well accepted in Japan that even in the most highly developed arts a degree of participation is expected from the spectator. In a Japanese poem or dance, for example, the poet or performer will give you only a few fleeting indications of the mood or meaning he wishes to express. The rest is up to you--your own faculties for appreciation, sharing, enlarging are assumed to be up to the challenge of completing the experience in your mind, of embellishing it with special meaning. The place of the observer is thus considerably enlarged. By translating the poem or dance into your own singular experience, you are no longer merely a passive spectator but an active participant.

Apply the same principle in your life, the Japanese believe, and it becomes not a passive progression from day to day but an active, stimulating and creative way of living.(#)

copyright @1956 by Street & Smith Publications, Inc.
Madamoiselle Magazine/Open Your Eyes to the Beauty Around You by Santha Rama Rau