Sometimes I see drawing exhibitions in trains. Theses pictures hanging in the trains are mostly drew by young kids especially elementary school students, some of them have themes and some not. I have seen recently a series of drawings of Keihan trains. I am always interested in looking at them and at many times I am even surprised by some of the drawings with their rather sophisticated drawing skills in spite of the very young age. Japanese people generally seem to be having a good taste and unstoppable pursuit of beautiful things. Although there are both high art and low art, it is indubitable that this ability and pursuit is quite general among Japanese society.
Japanese history parade in Kyoto
Red leaves sight seeing
This time of the year is a good season for red leaves sight seeing, and it will be ending very soon as the winter is coming. It was amazing how many the places you can go and how many advertisements tourist information you can see on the streets or on the trains during the past two months. People are driven by the earning of being in the beauty of natural, and are willing to go into the mountains and shrines and temples to see the scene only at this time of the year. It is an evident activity approving Japanese people are emphasise the motion of "beauty".
Visual Kei band member
However the "beauty" in which Japanese people is pursuing if more broad than what other people would think. It seems like in Japan "beauty" does not necessarily associated with "good", sometimes it can be "bad" but still as beautiful. The visual rock bands members often appear as dark, mystery and evil, but the details of their outfits and make-up are not as wild and harsh as what we might see in American Gothic bands. Japanese people added more femininity to the figure and consider nothing like rebel masculinity but a beautiful touch of the dark concept. I think this might also be a result of Japanese people being over attentive and solemn, always adding a beautiful sense to whatever they want to do or make. This might also explains at certain degree why do they developed things ikebana (flower arrangement) and sado (tea ceremony): due to the sense of beauty, they felt the necessity of investing attention and giving a beautiful atmosphere in making flower arrangements and cups of tea.
Beautiful Japanese sweets in cherry leaf
Red leaves sight seeing reminds me of the whole cherry blossom tale I have heard before I came to Japan. It is not the season of cherry trees yet and I have never been to Fuji mountain or other places which are famous for cherry blossom, I still think I can already tell how much people love the cherry blossom. I received some Japanese sweets wrapped in leaves. I though I should remove it before eating, but was told that the leaf should be eaten along with the rice cakes. Is the leaf necessarily tastes good? Not at all. I felt like a bunny when chewing it, but as the leaf is from the beautiful cherry tree and the whole rice cake becomes a piece of food art, it is important that I do not disrupt the beauty of it but to eat them as a whole. The rice cake itself tastes fantastic and maybe I have already felt its beauty, only I was probably
focused too much on the leaf.
Cute fish-shaped sweets
Beauty may be a blurred notion, and somehow it can only be acted out in order to be acknowledged. But as Yeats said, beauty must be a exit to the web we are trapped since we are born. Perhaps Japanese culture can be seen as an illustration of that kind of thinking, and carry out the notion by making beauty an important yet common theme which can be applied to almost every little detail in everyday life. It can sometimes seems to be too much, but the aspiring of beauty is never a bad thing for people.
Japanese "beauty" is a tough subject to cover in a short post like this. You have lots of good/interesting examples - perhaps focusing on a couple of them would be more useful.
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