Symbolism VS Reflection

It is hard to look at The Tale of Genji without looking through a filter of Westernized concepts and ideas. Yet here we are with this blog comparing Genji and his women to flowers and birds, trying to draw conclusions. I've been thinking about this and I with my Western ways I cannot see it possible that Shikibu did not take into consideration what each bird or flower that she included in her tale represented. Maybe I'll will look at the big picture and just compare Genji to a bird flying from flower to flower, tree to tree, where ever the wind blows(but researching what each flower, tree and bird means is way more fun:) but I'm a nerd LOL)

In the West symbolism is an integral part of who we are. Signs and symbols are abstracted representations of concepts or objects. Abstraction is almost what it means to be a Western civilization (Ogden, http:// talesofgenji.blogspot.com). Symbolism is ingrained into our way of thinking and it is hard not to seek out symbols and their potential hidden meanings. The Western reader is trained to assume that there are symbols everywhere and that there are deeper and more real meanings behind them. To the Japanese “[z]en does not indulge in abstraction or in conceptualization. In its verbalism it may sometimes appear that Zen does this a great deal. But this is an error most commonly entertained by those who do not at all know Zen” (http.www.davidcogswell.com/ Literature/Zen.html). In the West art is based on concrete ideas or symbolism. Western novels are riddled with symbolism and characters in novels tend to embody some sort of symbol.

Unlike the Western aesthetic tradition of symbolism, Japanese aesthetics reject this dualism and in doing so at the same time reject the characteristic western mentality of reconstructing the surrounding world. The Western way of recreating the world is incomprehensible to the Japanese. Life is art, they cannot be separated. Beauty exists in the surrounding world and is the surrounding world. Art cannot be made, it just is. The way the Japanese view things, man cannot create that which already exists, one can only recognize it for what it is and reflect on it. Japanese aesthetics seek to bridge man and nature (Ten chi jin), to recognize the rhythms of the world (Jo ha kyu or mono no aware), to seek hidden beauty; the imperfections of things (wabi sabi). The western way of taking the world and regurgitating it on to paper is to the Japanese essentially destroying the beauty of it; lessening its qualities. Essentially one cannot know the essence of beauty; one can only know it intrinsically through personal experience. Whereas Western aesthetics take the world and shape it into symbols, the Japanese reflect on the world, and reflection is an integral part of who they are and there are several examples of different types of reflection in Genji.