STUDIA PHÆNOMENOLOGICA XIV (2014) 133–159

Phenomenology of Japanese
Architecture:
En (edge, connection, destiny)
Michael Lazarin
Ryukoku University, Kyoto

Abstract: Japanese architecture emphasizes transitional spaces between rooms

rather than the rooms themselves. If these transitional spaces can be success-
fully realized, then everything in the room will naturally fall into place with
anything else. This also applies to the relation between a building and other
buildings stretching out through the whole city, and ultimately to the rela-
tion of the city to the natural environment. “En” is the Japanese word for
such transitional spaces. It means both “edge” and “connection.” It also means
destiny. When two people fall in love at first sight or understand each other
without having to speak, they are said to have “en.” This article provides a
phenomenological description and constitutional analysis of two Japanese
bridging structures: (1) the engawa at the side or back of a house or temple
which functions as a veranda for viewing the garden and a hallway to connect
the rooms, and (2) the hashigakari bridgeway of the Noh theater by which the
principal actor gets from the green room to the stage.

Keywords: Japanese Architecture, Transitional Spaces, engawa, hashigakari.

The streaming river Yuku kawa no

ever flows nagare wa taezushite
and yet the water shikamo moto no mizu
never is the same, ni arazu

While foam floats yodomi ni ukabu

upon the pools, utakata wa
scattering, gathering, kattsu kie katsu musubite
never lingering long, Hisashiki todomaritaru tameshi nashi
134 Michael Lazarin

So it is with man yononaka ni aru hito

and all his dwelling places to sumika to
here on earth.1 mata kaku no gotoshi.

So begins the Hojoki (1212) of Kamo no Chōmei (1155–1216). It de-

scribes Chōmei’s spiritual journey through the metaphor of his dwelling plac-
es, moving from the prestigious position of court poet to a humble monk
living in a mountain hut that could be packed into two carts and moved
according to the seasons of the year. Every educated Japanese is taught to
memorize these lines because they express the basic Japanese insight that real-
ity is “transient” and “evanescent.”
“Transiency” is expressed by the Buddhist principles “no permanent struc-
tures” (shogyō-mujō) and no independent self (shohō-muga). The key word
“mu” is often translated as “emptiness” or “void” because the single Chinese
character is the antonym of “substance,” but in combinations, “mu” means
something that is always erasing what is put into in order to accommodate
a new structure. Thus, “no-self ” does not describe “navel-gazing” but rather
a saintly soul who always displaces personal interests with those of another.
Similarly, the transiency of Chōmei’s dwellings is not so much about their
passing as the openness to new levels of consciousness that they provide. One
corollary of the Mahayana Buddhist doctrine of “mu” is that the transition
from bitterness to bliss is simply a matter of displacing the attitude of at-
tachment with non-attachment, that is, one should set aside claims about
the existence of beings or the rightness of assertions and simply focus on the
stream of free-variations. The practice
of non-attachment (munen) will re-
sult in a “pure seeing” that is non-
representational (musō).
In Japanese, evanescence is expressed
by the word “utsuroi.”The primary sense
of the word is “fading away,” but there
is a secondary Shintō sense of a god
entering into the hidden recesses of
something, usually a tree or a stone, and
animating it. If the presence of a god is
phrased in more modern terminology,
then “utsuroi” means the sublation (Auf-
heben) of ordinary experience to a tran-
scendental consciousness of things: an
openness to the living essence of things
beyond their material manifestation.

1
Kamo no Chōmei 1212: First sentence.
 Phenomenology of Japanese Architecture 135

In short, Chōmei’s opening lines state that the experience of dwelling,

properly understood, is a way of letting things go in order to bring them back
at a higher level of consciousness that sees the living essence of things as they
are of themselves rather than as one supposes them to be or would want them
to be. These Buddhist insights are neither mysterious nor strange; they are
very much like what Husserl calls transcendental-phenomenological epoché.
This emphasis on the transient and evanescent, and the practice of non-
attachment is typical of Asian Buddhism. What is special about the way they
developed in Japan owes to the Shintō emphasis on the living moment rather
than the great cycle of the Buddhist year. This is immediately visible in how
the Japanese aesthetic sensibility differs from that of China or Thailand. With
some exceptions, Japanese literature, music, painting and architecture moves
away from “dazzle” toward “shadow.” There is no need for vermillion paint
and gold leaf; the image of the beyond already shines in wood and stone. This
more subdued aesthetic is expressed by words like yūgen, wabi-sabi and mono-
no-aware. The first term will be discussed later in this article; the second needs
no discussion, but the third term requires some comment at the outset be-
cause it is frequently misinterpreted as being akin to Virgil’s “lacrymae rerum.”
Mono-no-aware was developed into an aesthetic concept by Motoori Nori-
naga (1730–1801), the greatest literary critic of the Edo period (1603–1867),
and signifies that beauty is best when it is brief. “Mono” means things and
“aware” is the emotional response to the evanescence of things. “Aware” first
occurs in the Manyōshu (after 759), the oldest compilation of Japanese po-
etry, but it was used much more frequently in the Heian period (794–1185).
The word is the juncture of two onomatopoeic exclamations “ah” and “hare.”
The former sound is an expression of awe (thauma) and the latter of surprise
(ekplektikos). It parallels the pathos of the dramatic climax in Aristotle’s Poetics,
but it differs from Aristotle in that the harmonic tension of events is intensi-
fied rather than resolved in the denouement. The intensification consists in
the demise of what was thoroughly fascinating in the aesthetic event, but this
ruination is experienced as satisfying fulfillment rather than suffering a loss. In
mono-no-aware, there is nothing of the abject destitution of Aeneas gazing at
an image of the destruction of Troy; rather, there is an acknowledgement that
this is how things are meant to be.
The best known example of mono-no-aware is the Japanese appreciation
of “falling” cherry blossoms. “No other word says transience: Sakura. They
bloom, then fall. Ahh! [aware] Such is the world.”2 The first warm days of
spring rarely last long enough for the blossoms to reach full maturity and fall
from their own weight. Instead, a final blast of Siberian wind and rain strikes

2
Tokudaiji 1205: 141. Full name Go-Tokudaiji Sadaijin Fujiwara no Sanesada (1139–
1191). “Sadaijin” is the highest ministerial rank; the Fujiwara clan were the preeminent masters
of both power and poetry in the Heian Period; “go” means “the later” to distinguish him from
his grandfather who was also known by the sobriquet “Tokudaji” (Grand Temple of Virtue).
136 Michael Lazarin

them from the branches just as they are achieving full bloom. I live near the
“Philosopher’s Path” in Kyoto, which follows a canal lined with cherry trees.
They draw large crowds as the flowers come into full bloom, but the largest
crowds come to see the petals falling into the canal, piling up eight centime-
ters or more, flowing toward a waterfall near one end of the path. And yet,
this catastrophe is not seen as misfortune; on the contrary, by being subsumed
into the flow of the river, the blossoms fulfill their destiny; in their passing,
they achieve their reality. Everyone knows that the demise of the blossoms is
a symbol of death, and everyone is smiling.
When the concept of mono no aware was applied to architecture, it came
to describe the “blown away roof ” views in illustrations of Genji Monoga-
tari, where one gets glimpses of intimate moments but never a comprehen-
sive view of the situation. The variety of architectural elements that misdirect
perceptions and blur boundaries also became signatures of mono-no-aware in
Japanese buildings, for example, carved transoms (ranma), blinds (sudare),
latticework (kōshi), paper sliding doors (fusuma and shōji) and folding screens
(byobu). Finally, mono-no-aware describes the instability of Japanese buildings
so easily knocked down by earthquakes or burned up in fires. One could ask:
“Why not make sturdier buildings?”, but the Japanese attitude maintains that
it is better to replace things than reinforce them.
During the Edo period, Tokyo was beset by forty-nine great fires and near-
ly constant lesser fires that consumed hundreds of temples and thousands
of houses. These fires were called “the flowers of Edo,” comparing them to
the falling cherry blossoms, and working class townhouses called nagaya were
jokingly referred to as yakiya (a pun meaning both burnt houses and a res-
taurant specializing in grilled meat). Though some efforts were made to build
firebreaks, not much could be done because the city was laid out in a spiral
pattern rather than a Cartesian grid.3 Real fire protection amounted to keep-
ing a supply of pre-cut lumber in another neighborhood so that one could get
one’s shop up and running within three days after a fire. One still finds such
bundles of lumber scattered around Kyoto.
This attitude of building for the moment rather than the long run can be
seen in some of the most famous contemporary Japanese architects. Unpro-
tected concrete begins to disintegrate and become shabby in about fifty years.
When Ando Tadao (b. 1941) was asked about how his museums would look
in the future, he answered that he did not care about such things. He writes in
Beyond Architecture, “Architecture is intimately involved with time. Standing
amid time’s continual flow, architecture simultaneously experiences the receding
past and the arriving future.”4 Isozaki Arata (b. 1931) argues that the principle

3
This spiral pattern was for military purposes because the grid system of Kyoto (based on
the Chinese capital Changan) had proven so vulnerable to invading armies.
4
Ando 1991: 100.
 Phenomenology of Japanese Architecture 137

of all Japanese architecture is “ruination.” In his book Japan-ness in Architecture,

Isozaki says that Western architecture is all about construction, but architecture
is really a process of construction and destruction. He says Japanese architects
and city planners need to emphasize the “transiency” of buildings. “Rubble”
needs to be incorporated into buildings so that one is not merely waiting for
decay but actually moving towards it. He says that “ruination” and “rubble” are
merely modern ways of expressing the traditional wabi-sabi aesthetic.5 Kuro-
kawa Kisho (1934–2007) rejects the overly somber interpretations of wabi-sabi
aesthetics, but even he says that the frequent destruction of buildings and cities
has resulted in the Japanese people having “an uncertainty about existence, a
lack of faith in the visible, a suspicion of the eternal.” Consequently, Japanese
buildings are always “temporary structures.”6
Because the temporal dimension of a building is not clearly distinguished
from the spatial dimension, and because the language of architectural aesthet-
ics originates in a tradition of literary analysis, Japanese architects often speak
of the narrative of a building rather than its structure or form. In appraising a
building, they think about the visitors passing from one room to another and
what kind of story this passage will tell the guests about the inhabitants, the
customers about the company and so on. When a building tells a good story,
when all of the incidents of its narrative naturally fall into place, the building
is said to have “ma.”7
In 1978, Isozaki organized an installation called “Ma: Space-Time in Ja-
pan” in Paris under the auspices of the Committee for the Year 2001, which
was repeated the next year at the Cooper-Hewitt Museum in New York. To
realize his exhibition, Isozaki chose nine categories8 which were presented by
an etymology of the key term, an installation by artists, designers or craftsmen
and an ancient tale from Japanese literature. One of Isozaki’s nine categories is
hashi, which in its normal usage means bridge. But Isozaki argues that it also
means edge. Isozaki’s idea is that hashi is essentially a matter of leaping across
an edge rather than filling-in a gap; in order to gain a purchase on the other
side, one must abandon attachments to this side. Bridging structures impli-
cate not only spanning a distance but also transcendence.

5
Isozaki 2006: 83–85.
6
Kurokawa 1997: Ch. 10.
7
Isozaki 1979: “According to the Iwanami Dictionary of Ancient Terms, ‘the natural distance
between two or more things existing in a continuity’ or ‘the space delineated by posts and
screens (rooms)’ or ‘the natural pause or interval between two or more phenomena occurring
continuously’.”
8
The nine categories according to the Cooper-Hewitt exhibition catalog are: (1) Himo-
rogi, also called onbashira (site/chora: altar, gate, kingpost), (2) Hashi (joint: bridge, hallway,
engawa), (3) Yami (darkness/shadow/gloom: roof, eaves), (4) Suki (refined taste), (5) Utsuroi
(change, fading), (6) Utsushimi (mortal body, manifestation), (7) Sabi (rusticity, antique patina,
decay; loneliness, solitude; moment of grace, moment of extinction), (8) Susabi, modern pro-
nunciation “asobu” (game, amusement, idleness), and (9) Michiyuki (on the way, on the move).
138 Michael Lazarin

Anything that crossed, filled, or projected into the chasm of Ma (space be-
tween two edges) was designated hashi. The edges bridged might include, for
example, the secular world and heavenly world; the upper level and the lower
level; the plate and the mouth.9 Ascending a bridge to reach the gods on high,
marking boundaries by stretching ropes, embarking on the ship of the dead for
the paradise beyond the seas, all these are hashi—the bridging of Ma.10

In Japanese, a bridging structure that has “ma” is said to have “en,” which
means both “edge” and “connection.” It also means “destiny” and has connota-
tions of transcendence in the sense of leaping toward one’s destiny. Two archi-
tectural examples of bridging structures are the “engawa,” an area at the rear
or side of a building used to view the garden, and the “hashigakari” bridgeway
of the Noh theater by which the principal actor gets from the green room
to the stage. In both cases, the architectural construction is designed to give
one the experience of the span being stretched out so as to blur the discrete
boundaries into a sensation of continuity. Situated in this continuum, a mo-
ment of transcendence becomes possible not only in terms of consciousness
but also in terms of the living body. If the bridging structure can achieve the
harmonic tension of “ma,” then seated on an engawa, one should feel oneself
flying toward the horizon of the world; and seated in the audience of a Noh
theater, when the principal actor glides across the hashigakari to the stage, one
should feel oneself leaping onto the stage alongside him.

1. Engawa: A Bridge to the Sky

“Engawa,” literally the “con-

necting-edge at the side,” is usually
translated as “veranda” because it is
the place to view the garden, but it
is also the closest thing to a hallway
in many traditional buildings, con-
necting adjacent rooms and leading
out to the bath and toilet at the rear
of a house. The engawa is wooden
flooring that is separated from the
interior tatami mat room and the
garden by translucent paper shōji
screens. At night, the building is
sealed off by interlocking, wooden
storm panels that slide along a track

9
Hashi (bridge) is a homophone of hashi (chopsticks) but the Chinese characters are unrelated.
10
Isozaki 1979: 13.
 Phenomenology of Japanese Architecture 139

at the exterior edge of the engawa. The shōji screens can be opened to greater
or lesser extents to create apertures between the interior and exterior. They can
also be completely removed so that there is no obstacle between the interior
of the building and the garden. In former times, swallows could pass easily
into a house, and if they built a nest in the house, it was considered good luck.
The engawa is an “intermediary zone” at the extreme interior of a temple,
teahouse or residence. In a Japanese building, “in” (oku) does not mean the
center of the building; rather, “in” is “back” and “up,” away from society and
towards nature. Areas of a building are differentiated by horizontal planes
rather than vertical barriers. In my house, a typical Kyoto townhouse, there
are seven elevations from the street level to the most important tokonoma
display alcove in the room at the rear of the house. The sliding panels that
constitute the walls come and go depending on the seasons, and the number
and kind of occupants. The first floor of the house may have as few as two
rooms or as many as five rooms depending on how the partitions are arranged.
In residential architecture, the tokonoma is usually side-lit by the engawa, from
which stepping stones and gravel beds provide descending elevations to the
garden. Although the engawa is the most articulated and variable “intermedi-
ary zone” in a house, in fact, the whole house can be seen as a series of tran-
sitional spaces between the public world at the front and the natural world at
the rear.
One of the most desirable features of a Japanese garden is “borrowed scen-
ery” (shakkei), where it appears that one’s garden actually extends to a distant
mountain at the horizon. At Entsuji Temple (1629-50), one views a typical
sand, stone and moss garden from the engawa of the main hall. In this case,
the area just beyond the garden drops away precipitously so that the next
field of vision is treetops. Beyond this field is Hieizan, the highest and most
sacred mountain in the chain that runs along the eastern side of Kyoto. The
effect is one of disjunctive leaps from moss to treetops to mountaintop. This
garden is often singled out as one of the best examples of shakkei because of
the great distance that is incorporated into the line-of-sight and the dizzying
sense of acceleration experienced when the gaze passes from the foreground
to the background. Nevertheless, not many buildings are so fortunately situ-
ated, so various landscaping techniques are employed to establish the illusion
of distance and depth. To mention one example, trees are forcefully cropped
and shaped so that what is scarcely more than a line of shrubs appears to
be a majestic forest in the distance. The illusion is sustained by the careful
arrangement of the shōji screens and considered juxtapositions of other gar-
den elements so that the engawa functions like a primitive telescopic lens.
Consequently, the engawa is not only an “intermediary zone” from the inte-
rior of the house to the garden, but it is also intended to give a sensation of
body extensionality toward the horizon of earth and sky. Japanese architecture
uses “intermediary zones” in order to misdirect and thereby annul ordinary
140 Michael Lazarin

perception so that one is forced to make use of and further develop one’s pro-
prioceptive capacities, especially the sensation of “spanning” through intervals
of space and time: ma.
This projection toward the sky is not only a matter of aesthetics but also
spiritual transcendence: epoché. Many engawa, garden and shakkei arrange-
ments are explicitly designed to facilitate Buddhist meditation: experiences
of non-attachment. Thus the construction of architectural elements such as
engawa are not simply a matter of tackling the design problem of interfacing
interior and exterior spaces; it is much more a matter of providing sites con-
ducive to certain ways of dwelling in the world.
“Building, Dwelling, Thinking” (Bauen, Wohnen, Denken) was delivered
on August 5, 1951 at the Darmstadt Colloquium II when there were still
three million homeless and thirteen million displaced persons in Germany.
Heidegger took the opportunity to inform the audience of architects and
building engineers convened to deal with this problem that building actually
rests upon dwelling and that once this is grasped, they would see that building
really has very little to do with providing shelter in the usual sense of enclosing
a secure space.

We cannot even adequately ask, let alone properly decide, what the essence
of the building of buildings might be so long as we fail to be mindful of the
fact that all building is in itself dwelling. We do not dwell because we have
built; rather, we build and have built insofar as we dwell, that is, because we
are dwellers.11

This was not a recent idea that he had cobbled together for the occasion.
As early as 1925 Heidegger had already argued in The History of the Concept
of Time (Prolegomena zur Geschichte des Zeitbegriffs) that the archaic German
word for “domus” or “house” is the same as the English word “inn” and that
this word comes from “innan” which means “to dwell.” At that time, he
maintained that dwelling primarily signified “being familiar with” rather than
the enclosure of space.12 Further, this reversal of the dependency of dwelling
on building, which would have been the usual framework on which the build-
ers hung their projects, could be expected from a philosopher who defined
the very essence of human existence as care of (Sorge) and concern for (besor-
gen) the Being of beings. The continuous care and maintenance of a building
by generations of dwellers certainly decides the destiny of a building more
than a couple of months of preparations in a design studio. For example, that
the Luxembourg Palace would eventually become the first public museum
in Paris, the headquarters of the German Luftwaffe in France and the Senate
chambers of the Fifth Republic certainly exceeded the intentions of Marie

11
GA 7: 150.
12
GA 20: §19.
 Phenomenology of Japanese Architecture 141

de Médici and her architect Salomon de Brosse. By putting the emphasis on

“dwelling,” Heidegger wants the architects at the Darmstadt II convention to
think about their projects in terms of the “unfolding” of time rather than the
“enclosure” of space. Though the housing crisis is urgent, Heidegger wants
the city planners to think about what kind of buildings will be conducive to
harmonious communities that are able to transcend the horrors of the past
and live in peace.
“Building, Dwelling, Thinking” makes the following connection between
building (bauen) and dwelling (wohnen): (1) bauen derives from buan (OHG)
which means “to remain” or “stay in place,” and (2) wohnen also means “to
remain,” but with these specifications: (a) to be at peace (zufrieden sein), (b) to
be brought to peace (zum Frieden gebracht) and (c) to remain in peace (in ihm
[Friede] bleiben).13 Next, Heidegger equates peace (Friede) with freedom (das
Freie) and argues that both of them really mean to preserve/take care of (be-
wahren/schonen). This brief passage is actually an abridgement of the argument
already presented in “The Essence of Truth” (Vom Wesen der Wahrheit 1930/31,
40), where the essence of freedom defines the essence of truth as “letting be-
ings be” (Seinlassen des Seienden) in “openness” (Offenbarkeit).14 This “letting-
be” is not a passive receptivity; on the contrary, a constant struggle must be
waged against the forces of dissimulation and error. But this campaign is not
to be waged on behalf of beings themselves, for concealment belongs to their
essence, too. Rather than any particular being, it is the “openness” itself that
must be preserved and cared for; thus, “letting-beings-be” is really a matter of
“letting-openness-be.” Preservation has nothing to do with maintaining the
status quo or restoration of the status quo ante; a building like the Luxembourg
Palace need only remain an open place conducive to the gathering and dwell-
ing of humans in any future age. As to what this “openness” is, we learn little
in “The Essence of Truth” except that it is a “mystery” (Geheimnis).
Coming to a more precise account of the meaning of “letting-openness-
be” was important for Heidegger during the period in which “Building,
Dwelling, Thinking” was composed. He understood that the key to unlock
the mystery of “openness” lay in an understanding of the Greek word logos
and this would involve a deconstruction of how this word had come down to
us as “rational explanation.” On May 4, 1951, he delivered the lecture “Logos
(Heraklit, Fragment 50),” an interpretation of the “logos is one/all” fragment,
to the Bremen Club as a contribution to the Festschrift für Hans Jantzen, an
art historian. Also, during the winter and summer semesters of 1951-52, Hei-
degger delivered a lecture course What is Called Thinking? (Was heißt Denken?)
with a long discussion of legein and noein in Parmenides. In the Logos lecture,
legein is translated as “letting-lie-forth in unconcealment” (Vorliegenlassen in

13
GA 7: 148–151.
14
GA 9: 185ff.
142 Michael Lazarin

die Unverborgenheit). We learn that the process of logos is the “way” that the
open happens, and this “way” is neither a process of connecting (Verknüpfen)
nor even freely juxtaposing (Verkoppeln) beings in the open, but rather “en-
during differences hauled out to their utmost extremity” (das Tragende [in die
äusßserste Weite] im Austrag).15 What makes it so difficult for modern thinking
to understand that “rational explanation” is a matter of stretching out the rela-
tions among things almost to the breaking point rather than locking them up
in an ever tighter framework of connections is the “Platonic Turn” in Western
thinking. This problem had also been worked out many years before the pe-
riod of “Building, Dwelling, Thinking.”
About the same time that he delivered his lectures on “The Essence of
Truth” in the winter semester of 1931/32, Heidegger was gathering his
thoughts on the Platonic idea of logos, later published as “Plato’s Doctrine
of Truth” (Platons Lehre von der Wahrheit 1931/32: 40). The text demolishes
the metaphysical understanding of logos as the “agreement” of the sensible
and supersensible and the expression of this agreement in the “correctness”
of assertions. Instead of the unconcealment (Unverborgenheit) of things to a
knower, i.e., “letting-beings-be-in-openness,” truth becomes sorting (kritein)
the ways a knower knows things. Ultimately, in the present age, the truth of
things is determined by the judgments of a knower, whereupon Nietzsche
declares that “truth is a kind of error”(Wahrheit is die Art von Irrtum).16 Hei-
degger also says that when “unconcealment” becomes “correctness” in Plato,
the relationship between truth (aletheia), knowledge (nous) and beauty (kala)
gets cross-circuited such that knowledge becomes an apprehension of correct
assertions rather than beauty, the shining presence (ekphanestaton) of things.17
The sorry consequence of this is expressed in the fourth lecture of the first
semester of What is Called Thinking? where Heidegger imagines modern phi-
losophers standing before a tree in bloom puzzling about the reality of the
tree rather than taking in the splendor of its presence, and modern scientists
scanning the brains of the philosophers to discover if anything is happening in
there.18 If “agreement” and “correctness” are not the measure of truth granted
by openness, then what could decide this? The answer is pursued in a second
attempt at elucidating dwelling and building that takes place two months
after the Darmstadt Colloquium II.
On October 6, 1951, at Bühlerhöhe, Heidegger delivered a lecture titled
“…Poetically Man Dwells…” (…dichterisch wohnet der Mensch…). Hei-
degger says that “poetic” has little to do with what goes on at the desk of
a poet and even less with what passes as literary criticism. Instead, “poetic”
describes a fundamental way of Being-in-the-world which Heidegger defines

15
GA 7: 224–226.
16
GA 9: 231–233.
17
GA 9: 231–232.
18
GA 8: 45 ff.
 Phenomenology of Japanese Architecture 143

as “taking-a-measure” (Vermessung). But when he speaks of dwelling, the ar-

gument appears to be the opposite of his previous thesis: “human existence
is to be thought in terms of dwelling,” but “…the poetic is not merely an
ornamental addition to dwelling,” rather “before all else, poetic composition
(Dichten) lets dwelling be dwelling,” and as the letting-be of dwelling, “poet-
ry (Dichtung) is building (Bauen), perhaps the distinctive way of building.”19
Whereas “dwelling” was the basis of “building” in the Darmstadt II address,
now “building” is the basis of “dwelling.” Has he changed his mind? In the
earlier lecture, building is mainly thought as “designing and constructing,”
in the second lecture, he is suggesting that dwelling can be a real “maintain-
ing and preserving” only if the dwellers have an active, responsible attitude
toward the building, only if they are also builders in a fundamentally poetic
way. But which comes first? Does one need an authentic (eigentlich) dwelling
attitude in order to properly build or a proper (eigen) building attitude in
order to authentically dwell? Of course, in Heidegger, neither is first; it is a
hermeneutic circle. The question is how to leap into the circle in an appropri-
ate (Ereignis) way.
At the Darmstadt Colloquium II, several architects made proposals for
the reconstruction of Germany. One of the winning proposals was by Ernst
Neufert, known for his architectural handbook Bauentwurfslehre, which has
been translated into seventeen languages and has sold over 500,000 cop-
ies. The handbook establishes standard measurements for the height, width
and depth of any architectural feature, including the distance between arm-
chairs, hospital beds and graves. This handbook is an important reason why
modern hotel rooms from Berlin to Shanghai to New York have almost the
same layout and dimensions. But when Heidegger says poetic building is
“taking a measure,” he has something different in mind: it is the measure
between Earth and Sky (Zumessen des Zwischen: des Hinauf zum Himmel also
des Herab zur Erde).20
Lest anyone dismiss this definition as being a bit too poetic, recall that in
the foundational text of Western architecture, Vitruvius argues that the ability
to use tools and assemble materials is insignificant compared with our ability
to “fix our gaze upon the great-making of the earth and stars” (mundique et
astrorum magnificentiam aspicerent).21 Because humans can take the measure
of the stars, they are able to construct monumental projects like Rome. With-
out this star-gazing, human buildings would be little more than embellish-
ments on the rough structures made by the lower animals, for example, nests
and burrows. Architecture is essentially about transcendence. In the West,
this generally means striving for permanence; in Japan it means accepting the

19
GA 7: 193.
20
GA 7: 199.
21
Vitruvius: II.1.2.
144 Michael Lazarin

stream of impermanence. For Heidegger, as we shall see, he might better have

looked for his poetic measure in Kamo no Chōmei’s movable mountain hut
than in the stones of the temple at Paestum.
Heidegger points out that both the German word “dichten”22 and the
Greek word “poiein,”23 from which the English word “poetic” derives, essen-
tially mean production as “bringing-forth” (das Hervorbringen).24 According
to the traditional Western classification of the sciences, production (composi-
tion, technology and cultivation) has been considered a side issue to the main
disciplines of theory (metaphysics, physics and mathematics) and practice
(politics, ethics and economics). Contrary to this tradition, Heidegger argues
that since the “Platonic Turn,” productive science has always been the central
interest of Western thinking and that the core concepts of theory and practice
rest on the presuppositions of productive science, for example, the matter-
form concept of the thing.
In fact, our current age is cursed by a pernicious form of productive sci-
ence that Heidegger calls “technological thinking.” The essence of technologi-
cal thinking is “enframing” (das Gestell), a drive to submit everything to an
absolute order, to regard all of nature as a “standing reserve,” to measure every
artifact in terms of reliability and to despise anything “poetic” or “artistic”
as capricious triviality. In the classical age, when production was measured
by beauty, tragedy, temples and wine were excellent exemplars of the arts;
in the modern period, when efficiency rules, Hollywood movies, apartment
blocks and cheap beer are typical results of the assembly line. Nevertheless,
Heidegger is not requesting a return to an earlier age. He argues that poetics is
really a more fundamental kind of measuring than either classical or modern
philosophy envisions. Poetics takes a measure that makes any specific activity
of human dwelling possible. Rather than a measure which attempts to capture
and identify intervals, calibrate and establish standards for what may be on
earth and in the heavens, poetic measuring stretches out the span between
Earth and Sky, preserves the difference, and delights in the vibrancy of the
“in-between.”
This precisely describes the architectural function of an engawa; rather
than demarcating the boundary between interior and exterior, it blurs the
boundary, and through this haze, it establishes an aperture to view the garden

22
According to Kluge 1891: Dichten, invent, imagine, fabricate, write, from MHG. ti[c]hten
meaning schaffen (make), erdenken (create), aussinnen (invent), anordnen (arrange).
23
According to Liddell-Scott: poiein (infinitive), poieô (present indicative): generally pro-
duce: A.: 1. make something material such as equipment or art (frequently used in Homer
for building), 2. create, bring into existence, 3. compose, write, 4. bring about, make it so,
put in a certain place or condition, prepare, 5 postulate, conclude, suppose it to be, 6. deem,
consider it to be lawful or right, 7. play the part of. B.: 1. do, act, 2. do something to another
or for another.
24
Cf. the active aspect of dwelling as “letting-lie-forth” (vorliegenlassen) above.
 Phenomenology of Japanese Architecture 145

and mountain beyond. The aim of this blurring is to construct an aesthetic

illusion such that one appears to be projected toward the horizon of the visible
world. Normal sensation is misdirected so that the proprioception of span-
ning is enhanced and the emptiness of the “in-between” becomes a tangible
quality. This is what the Japanese call “en,” an edge which is also already leap-
ing to the other side. But how do we know that this sense of spanning to the
horizon is a result of the architecture and not too many cups of sake?
The argument of “…Poetically Man Dwells...” is based on some lines from
a late poem by Friedrich Hölderlin, “In Lovely Blueness.” Early in his career,
at the time he was struggling to compose the never-completed drama, The
Death of Empedocles, Hölderlin rejected the possibility of “synthesis” between
art and nature, mortals and divinities, the finite and infinite; instead, the gap
is to be spanned by “harmonic opposition” with an “extreme sphere.”
Place yourself, by free choice, in harmonic opposition with an extreme
sphere (äußeren Sphäre), so as you are in yourself, by nature, in harmonic
opposition (harmonischer Entgegensetzung), though in an unknowable way
(unerkennbarerweise) so long as you remain in yourself.25
For Hölderlin, the human soul is always already a “harmonic opposition,”
but if a poet remains within the confines of subjectivity, then poetic composi-
tion is doomed to a succession of self-defeating struggles. But when the “har-
monic opposition” is with an “extreme sphere,” then it is possible to step back
from oneself and reflect upon things in a way that does not nullify everything.
The “extreme sphere” helps one overcome attachment to things, and more
importantly, attachment to oneself. At the same time, the extremity of the
sphere helps one avoid attachment to the sphere itself, to avoid attachment to
an endlessly pleasurable contemplation of the transcendent.
Hölderlin describes a state of poetic ecstasy that hovers “in-between” tran-
scendence and subjectivity; he calls it a “holy” (heiliger) feeling “because it is,
and can only be, neither only selflessly (uneigennützig) devoted to its object,
nor only selflessly resting on its inner ground.” But then he makes a remark-
able turn and distances himself from the “in-between” itself. Poetic composi-
tion is “divine” (göttlich) because, besides avoiding the purely transcendent
and the purely subjective, it also avoids undecidedly hovering “in-between”
them (unbestimmt zwischen ihrem inner Grunde und ihrem Objeckte schwe-
bend). Poetic composition is never any of these because it is always all of them
at once (weil sie alles dies zugleich ist). Poetic composition is “beautiful” and
“wonderfully all-present,” as Hölderlin puts it in the hymn “As on a Holiday”
because it is “definite and knowable” (bestimmter und erkennbarer).26
Poets lift their eyes and measure the difference between Earth and Sky.
Through their works, they make the measure perceptible to humans, but any

25
Hölderlin 1963: 619.
26
Hölderlin 1963: 623.
146 Michael Lazarin

attempt to precisely determine the measure and establish frameworks leads

to disaster. The measure can be known but it cannot be explained by the
rational discourse of “agreement” and “correctness.” Lacking these rational
underpinnings, the experience of the measure can be terrifying, and indeed,
the sensation of suddenly flying out of the tranquility of the garden at Ent-
suji towards snow-capped Hieizan leaves one thunderstruck. But as Hölderlin
says in “As on a Holiday,” earthbound mortals can safely receive the divinely
kindled thunderbolt because poets have wrapped it in song. The poetic mea-
sure is known when we experience what Hölderlin calls “kindness of heart”
(die Freundlichkeit am Herzen). Heidegger equates kindness (Freundlichkeit)
with grace (Huld) by way of claiming that Hölderlin means to translate the
Greek word “charis” (L. gratia) when he says “kindness.”27 In ancient Greek,
“grace” means not only goodwill and gratitude but also splendor (Aglaea),
mirth (Euphrosyne), and joy (Thalia).
Despite the fact that both Heidegger and Hölderlin weave this fabric of
kindness and grace out of ancient Greek threads, we cannot help seeing Chris-
tian images in the pattern. In the Summa Theologica, grace and charity (cari-
tas) stand in a reciprocal relation. Grace is always the condition of charity,
but good works open up the soul to the gift of grace.28 We know that charity
and grace are harmonically attuned when we feel joy (for oneself ), peace
(with one’s neighbors) and mercy (for one’s enemies). Put in this way, the po-
etic measure is knowable as the experience of grace, which is simultaneously
the condition for the possibility of poetic composition. But contrary to his
predecessors, Aquinas allows for some positive contribution by good works,
where charity not only prepares for but also preserves the openness to grace.29
Hölderlin’s phrase also moves in this direction with his peculiar German usage
of “am Herzen” instead of the more usual “zu Herzen.” In Hölderlin’s turn of
phrase the emphasis is shifted from “kindness” to “heart,” from appreciation
of the experience of openness to a heartfelt concern for the preservation of it.
Heidegger says this “heartfelt” concern can be heard in the Anglo-Saxon roots
of the word Gemüt.30

27
GA 7: 307–208.
28
Aquinas II-I Q113–114. Grace is the salvation of the embodied soul, and there are two
cases: (1) justification of the ungodly and (2) merits of the godly. The route to salvation differs
for each, but in general the goal is to achieve a state of “justice” with God by acts of free-will.
This is achieved by charity, both in itself and insofar as charity organizes all of the virtues to be
oriented toward “justice.”
29
Especially when it is exercised as “fraternal criticism.”
30
According to Kluge 1891: Gemüt, spirits, disposition, from MHG. gemüete, a collective
of Mut, the totality of thoughts and feelings. Mut, courage, mood, from MHG and OHG
muot, spirits, courage, mind. OSax. and AS. môd, courage, heart, zeal, inner self. Clearly a
much more vigorous word in the old Teutonic languages than the present day Gemütlichkeit: a
pleasant and friendly atmosphere.
 Phenomenology of Japanese Architecture 147

In the third lecture of the second semester of What is Called Thinking?,

Heidegger famously equates thinking with thanking and explains that he ar-
rived at this conclusion by receiving a clue from an extreme sphere which calls
to him from beyond the vicious circle that undercuts the validity of all the
empirical sciences, in this case, philology.31 Thinking and thanking, memory
and imagination, indeed, all the cognitive (intellectus) and pre-cognitive (per-
cipio) activities of the human soul are grounded in the “heartfelt concern”
which stretches from the innermost core to the outermost reaches of human
capacity such that thoughts of inner and outer no longer arise.32 The poetic
measure stretched to the utmost extremes becomes a harmonic interval, what
the Japanese call “en.” The “heartfelt concern” is not a repayment for the gift
of the poetic measure, but rather a recognition of the measure such that it
“calls for” (An-denken) poetic dwelling.33 The way into the hermeneutic circle
of dwelling and building is a way of thinking that calls to us from our deepest
heartfelt concerns.
In the first semester of What is Called Thinking?, Heidegger says that what
is most thought provoking in our current age is that we are still not thinking.
He describes this situation using a phrase from Nietzsche: “The wasteland
grows” (Die Wüste wächst). The wasteland grows because the spirit of revenge
is loose in Western culture. Revenge is driven by insistence on continuous
presence, the inability to let things go. It is antagonism (Widerwille) to the
evanescence of time, that things pass away into an “It was.” Deliverance from
revenge can only come through “detachment” (Lösung) from the past, but not
from time itself. Letting things go in the present (Gegenwärtigkeit) is actually
the best way to preserve them in their presence (Anwesenheit). “Deliverance
from revenge is the bridge … that crosses over to the eternal recurrence of the
same ... which is the primal Being (Ursein) of all beings.”34
Japanese Noh plays often depict some horrific event that took place in the
distant past. Typically, a wandering monk comes upon a building that has
fallen into decay. A female or male character, who is tending to something
nearby, tells the monk the story of the tragic event that took place at this
site. This character exits the stage, the monk dozes off, then the character
returns—whether in the monk’s dreams or waking reality is never certain—as
the ghost or demonic possession of the person the monk had mistaken as an
ordinary mortal. The passions of this soul are revealed in an ever-intensifying

31
GA 8: 142 ff.
32
GA 8: 149.
33
GA 8: 146–47. This very loose translation of An-denken follows from Heidegger’s expla-
nation that An-denken is what transforms the essentialist question of “What is thinking?” into
the more important existentialist question “What calls for thinking?.” In Heidegger’s elucida-
tion of Hölderlin’s hymn “Remembrance” (Andenken), he argues that what is memorialized
is the moment when Hölderlin became a poet of “presence” rather than a poetizer of events.
34
GA 8: 108.
148 Michael Lazarin

dance and choral chant until the character once again departs from the stage.
The performance always ends with the character finding some measure of
tranquility but not expiation; thus, the character must forever return to the
site and live the horror again and again. The comings and goings of this char-
acter occur by crossing over a bridgeway structure called hashigakari.

2. Hashigakari: A Bridge to the Underworld

In “Building, Dwelling, Thinking,” Heidegger remarks that space is neither

something outside us nor within us. Rather, it is a stretching out toward things.

If now all of us here think of the old bridge in Heidelberg, what this think-
ing gets at is no mere experience inside the people present here; the essence
of such thinking is much more a matter of thinking about the bridge in a way
that in itself thinking gets through the distance to that site. From here, we are
out there with the bridge rather than in some kind of representation within
our consciousness.35

The bridge spans the banks of the Neckar River. In thinking about it, a
second spanning occurs such that we are present at the bridge.
In a Japanese Noh theater, there is a long bridgeway (hashigakari) between
the green room (kagaminoma, lit. the “ma” of mirrors) and the stage proper
(butai), which is regarded as a sacred religious altar. The bridgeway gives onto
the upstage right corner of the stage at about a 120 degree angle. It spans about
eight meters and it can take the actor ten or fifteen minutes to reach the stage,
which is about 5.5 meters on each side. It is the means by which the actor gets
to the stage, but it also provides an interval by which the actor is projected
into the dramatic world of demons and ghosts. If the actor can make this leap,
then he will bear the “flower” (hana) of artistic excellence and the audience
will be absorbed into the performance as “fascination” (omoshiroki).36
But to achieve the highest level of aesthetic perfection, the actor must
possess “grace” (yūgen). This level of performance is called “fulfillment” (jōju,
lit. “coming to settle in a place”) and describes a situation where “the whole
audience expresses astonishment in a single gasp,” and as one mass conscious-
ness is projected onto the stage to meet the actor in the sacred space of the
performance.37
Komparu Kunio (1926–1983), a 22nd generation Noh actor, contrasts
hana and yūgen in this way:

35
GA 7: 159.
36
Zeami 1984c: 119.
37
Zeami 1984e: 137–40.
 Phenomenology of Japanese Architecture 149
If we contrast these two inseparable concepts we will have both hana: exterior
symbolic beauty, beauty seen, and yūgen: subconscious beauty, beauty felt and
responded to, and there can be seen a change of consciousness from beauty
that one is made to see to beauty that one is made to feel.38

Noh means “ability.” It is not merely the ability to dance and sing and play
music; it is the fundamental poetic power to “bring forth” worlds. Thus, yūgen
is not only an aesthetic quality; it also means spiritual transcendence in the
Zen Buddhist sense of living intensely in the present moment.
Yūgen is composed of two characters both of which mean “darkness and
mystery,” but the first character “yū” also has connotations of “serenity and
peace.” In China, Daoism used the word to describe a truth beyond rational
explanation. In Japan, the word was used to describe how waka and haiku lyric
poetry convey meaning through associations rather than explicit connections.
There is a preference for things only dimly seen through mist or obscured
by the fading light of autumn dusk. The sense of vagueness and attenuation
continued to be the primary meaning of the word in the wabi-sabi aesthetic
of the tea ceremony, especially the “refined rusticity” (kireisabi) practice as-
sociated with the tea-master Kobori Enshū (1579–1647).39 But when yūgen
was employed in discussions of dramatic performance a radical shift occurred.
The intellectual founder of the Kanze Noh school, Zeami Motokiyo
(1363–1443) originally used the word yūgen to describe the hana of maiden
roles, but as his thought matured, it came to mean the sudden insight of
Zen Buddhism: “In Silla, in the dead
of night, the sun shines brightly.”40
In the lyric tradition of the waka and
haiku poets the relation of light and
darkness, presence and absence, in-
finitude and finitude is dialectical,
but in the dramatic tradition of Noh,
the contrasts should be stark contra-
dictions existing side by side, a “har-
monic opposition.” The shining sun
does not nullify the darkness; only be-
cause there is light can we have shad-
ows. The shadow-world does not dim
the light; the dark depths accentuate
anything that glimmers. The perfor-
mance of an old man should have a
trace of former vigor; there should be

38
Komparu 2005: 14.
39
JAANUS.
40
Zeami 1984d: 120. “Silla” is an old name for Korea.
150 Michael Lazarin

some method in the madness of an abandoned maiden; a demon from hell

must possess some charm, “for the interest the spectator finds in the perfor-
mance of a demon role is like a flower blooming among the rocks.”41 In order
to fascinate an audience, the whole performance and every particular aspect of
it must simultaneously present contradictory elements and the ability to har-
monize these contradictions is the aesthetic perfection of the artwork (hana).
The ability to then disrupt the established harmony and draw the audience
into the oppositions is the gateway to fulfillment (yūgen).
The entrance of an actor onto the stage is a troublesome moment. In a
Western theater, the actor is either offstage or onstage; the passage from one
to the other occurs in an instant. In a Japanese Noh theater, the moment of
entrance is stretched out as much as possible. While it is true that the princi-
pal Noh actor (shite) passes through a curtain to the bridgeway, it cannot be
said that he is yet onstage. The first few meters of the bridgeway in a tradi-
tional theater are cast in deep shadow, and the audience is usually distracted
by a supporting actor (waki) already onstage from the outset delivering the
prologue. Eventually, the attention of the audience is turned toward the main
actor somewhere along the way of the hashigakari and an atmosphere of an-
ticipation is established by the procession to the stage through a jo-ha-kyū
(prosodia, capriccio, presto) movement.42
Komparu explains that jo means “beginning” in a spatial sense, while kyū
means “speed or suddenness” so it is a temporal element. Ha means “break
or ruin” and thus is a disordering element.43 If we think about it, the simple
act of walking is an example of this progression. One plants a foot on the
ground (jo), then allows oneself to fall forward (ha), then quickly recovers
one’s balance by thrusting the other foot forward (kyū). The movement of a
Noh actor is merely a more graceful accomplishment of this action.
The three elements should establish a harmonic tension among themselves
and infinitely replicate themselves at every level. Not only the passage across
the hashigakari but also each step along the way and the whole program of
five plays should proceed according to a jo-ha-kyū progression. Zeami says
that the progression derives from the natural relationships (ma) of everything
in existence.
Jo-ha-kyū is a design principle not only for dramatic and musical composi-
tions but also various spatial arts.44 For example, in flower arrangement, three
different seasonal plants are arranged such that one is short (jo), another tall

41
Zeami 1984a: 17. The expression “flower blooming among the rocks” has become an
iconic definition of the essence of Noh.
42
The translation of jo-ha-kyū by prosodia, capriccio, presto is my own.
43
Komparu 2005: 24–25.
44
In the spatial arts, one is more apt to find an aesthetic triplet such as ten-chi-jin (sky-
earth-man) in the theoretical texts. All the schools of flower arrangement agree that sky is the
correlate of presto (kyū), but they differ as to whether earth or man is the capricious element.
 Phenomenology of Japanese Architecture 151

(kyū) and the third darts out at a capricious angle (ha). The same thing can
be seen in temple design with the heavy, brooding roof (yane, lit. room-root)
of the main hall (jo) beside the soaring elevation of the pagoda (kyū) which
come into view upon passing through the main gate (ha), which is capricious
in that there is rarely a wall.
In any artistic practice, for every poetic way of bringing-something-forth,
the ha moment should be a capricious interruption in which something that
already has been is allowed to burst forth into the full flower of its being.
Komparu describes this event of transcendence as a reversal of figure and
ground. The man as actor fades and the choral chant comes to the fore. Sud-
denly, a ghost or a demon is present.45 In The Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche says,
the chorus forms “a living wall which tragedy draws around itself in order to
separate itself cleanly from the real world and to protect its ideal space and its
poetical freedom for itself.” The ideal space of poetic freedom is neither real
nor un-real; rather, it is another kind of reality, that is, the religious reality of
“fictitious natural beings.”46
Hölderlin also understood the importance of a disruptive “ha” moment in
tragedy. In one of his notes on the translation of Sophocles, he writes,

In tragedy, […] the way in which ideas and feelings and reflections
emerge […] is more counterpoise than pure succession. For the tragic
transport is essentially empty and the most unbounded of all. Hence
the rhythmic succession of ideas wherein the transport manifests itself
demands a counter-rhythmic interruption, a pure word, that which in
metrics is called a caesura, in order to confront the speeding alternation
of ideas at its climax, so that not the alternation of the idea, but the
idea itself appears.47

The same sort of thing is supposed to happen on the bridgeway of a Noh

theater. Komparu describes the area near the mirror room as the jo area or
mask boards, where the actor denies the mask, that is, denies that the mask is
some kind of prop or disguise. In a sense, the actor is merely a vehicle to pro-
pel the mask onto and around the stage. The character comes to life more in
the mask than in the body of the actor. The central part is the ha area or music
boards, where the movement of the actor synchronizes with the polyrhythms
of the music. Komparu says that the rhythms and tonality of the Noh chorus
were probably based on the chanting of Buddhist sutras, where “each reciter
proceeds at his own pitch and tempo, producing an eerie harmony believed to
have some magical force.”48 It is at this point that “fascination” should become

45
Komparu 2005: 162.
46
Nietzsche 1968: 59.
47
Hölderlin 2009: 317–18.
48
Komparu 2005: 162
152 Michael Lazarin

“fulfillment.” On a few occasions, in my experience, the entire audience did

gasp with astonishment and tremble in the presence of a “ghost.” The last
stretch before stepping onto the stage is the kyū area or fan boards, where the
actor fixes the attention of the audience on the fan, “the focal point of the
performance.”49 The fan is a magic wand by which absent things are made
present. It can function as either signified or signifier. There are many iconic
movements of the fan by which it becomes a wine jug or a flute in the hands
of the actor, or it may indicate that the actor is gazing at the moon or into the
pit of hell.
Regarding the architecture of the Noh stage, the most capricious element
is the hashigakari bridgeway. In order to deal with the problem of getting the
actor onto the stage without anyone noticing the transition, the transitory
moment is stretched out and made visible to all. The bridgeway also compli-
cates the problem of establishing stage presence for the actor. Long before he
reaches the stage and can establish his character through song and dance, he
is required to move in a straight line, able to convey the inner pathos of his
character only in the jo-ha-kyū movement of his stride. Everything depends
on getting from here to there in the most inconvenient way possible.
Since Vitruvius, the time honored elements of Western architecture are:
durability (firmitas), accommodation (utilitas), and delight (venustas). As we
have already seen, the notion of durability counts for nothing in Japanese
architecture. Even if a building is constructed out of the finest materials, the
Japanese, if they can afford it, will tear it down and replace it with an identical
replica long before it is necessary to do so. The temple roof of Nishi Honganji
in Kyoto, one of the largest in Japan and one that should last three-hundred
years, is replaced every thirty years and it takes five years to do this. With
the hashigakari bridgeway, we can see that accommodation is also not much
prized in the layout of a building plan. The incommodious aspect of an enga-
wa serving both as a seating area and a hallway is also an example of a certain
disregard for convenience. In preparation for the 1100th anniversary of the
founding of Kyoto, the city built a new train station. It is an ultra-modernist
design by Hara Hiroshi (b. 1936). The Escheresque arrangement of stairways,
escalators and tunnels make it difficult even for the locals to find their way
from one side of the station to the other. Since Kyoto is the most-visited tour-
ist destination in Japan, it seems somewhat odd to run the tourists through a
maze in order to find the bus depot or taxi pool. Ando Tadao played a similar
game on a smaller scale when he designed a building for shops specializing in
the most expensive European designer fashions that required the high-heeled
ladies to needlessly ascend and descend flights of stairs set at an unusually
steep pitch. In fact, Ando first became famous for his design of a two-room

49
Komparu 2005: 138–39.
 Phenomenology of Japanese Architecture 153

house that required the inhabitants to go outside to get from one room to the
other.
These different attitudes about durability and accommodation pale in
relation to how Japanese architects realize the experience of delight. When
Vitruvius gazed into the heavens, he saw order and did his best to replicate
these proportions in patterns which have defined Western architecture until
modern times.50 Japanese see order in the great cycle of the Buddhist year, the
eternal return, but they map it on the Earth with the maxim “make a circle,
then break the circle.” Breaking the circle is the moment of “ha” which gives
the building its aesthetic delight (hana), but it is also an occasion for tran-
scendence (yūgen). This sense that the perfection of the circle is only achieved
when the circle is momentarily broken is expressed in the well-known poem
of Matsuo Bashō (1644–1694):
The old pond— Furu ike ya jo: stillness
frog jumping Kawazu tobikomu ha: otherness
water sound.51 mizu no oto kyū: enlightenment
In Japanese culture, the old pond is an image of stillness and silence; it is
the serenity of enlightenment, a way of Being which is always already avail-
able but somehow forgotten. The frog is as tiny as one can imagine; it is the
everyday self leaping into the true mind. The sound of the water is barely
audible; what exactly jumped cannot be said, but if one looks quickly, perhaps
the expanding circles of the event can still be seen on the surface of the pond.
The serenity of the pond is realized only when the peace is broken by a
capricious event, expressed in the poem by the startled exhalation: “ya.” But
what sound does the frog hear as it plunges into the depths of the pond?
Basho’s “thinking gets through the distance to that” diving frog. The poem also
implies that such moments should not be too precious. One cannot inten-
tionally sit by ponds waiting to be startled by leaping frogs. In fact, the poem
was composed during a poetry competition on the theme of frogs, and the
tiny diving frog managed to catch the attention of a dozen poets. Bashō seized
the moment and brought forth the prize-winning lines.
How can a Noh actor prepare the audience for the rupture of the great
circle, if everyone knows where and when it is supposed to happen? According
to Zeami, this can only happen when the actor learns to “keep the beginner’s
mind (shoshin),” by which he means that every performance must be as if it
were the first time, untried and untested. In order to bestow grace (yūgen), an

50
Vitruvius: I.2.1. Architecture consists in order (ordinatio), which the Greeks call taxis,
and arrangement (dispositio), which the Greeks called diathesin, and proportion (eurythmia),
symmetry (symmetria), elegance (decore) and management (distributio) which the Greeks called
oeconomia.
51
Matsuo Bashō 1686. This is a literal translation.
154 Michael Lazarin

accomplished actor must recover his original “purity of heart” lest he rely too
heavily on performance elements that have succeeded in the past.52 In 1928,
upon gaining his professorship at Freiburg, Heidegger took the time to write
to his old headmaster at the seminary in Constance, “Perhaps philosophy
shows most forcibly and persistently how much Man is a beginner. Philoso-
phizing ultimately means nothing other than being a beginner.”53
As mentioned above, Hölderlin calls the experience of “divinely empow-
ered” poetic composition, kindness (Freundlichkeit am Herzen), and Heidegger
claims that kindness is Hölderlin’s way of saying “grace.” We know the “har-
monic opposition” of the poetic composition has been achieved when mortals
live in joy, at peace and through mercy. But the emphasis in Hölderlin’s phrase
is on the heart, the “heartfelt concern” that maintains and preserves the open-
ness of the logos. Heidegger says that Hölderlin always uses the word “pure”
(die Reine) when he mentions the heart and so the “at heart” in the phrase
means original innocence: “Their [the poets] highest decisiveness (Entschie-
denheit), the poetic saying, appears as the most innocent (unschuldigste).”54 In
“As on a Holiday,” Hölderlin says that the divinely empowered poetic com-
position will not destroy the poets only if their “hearts are pure” and their
“hands are guiltless.” The bridge that crosses over from the spirit of revenge,
the antagonism to transience and evanescence, is “purity of heart.” This is not
primarily a matter of morality; instead, it concerns a way of thinking, the way
of the “beginner’s mind.” It is a way of thinking in which our perceptive and
proprioceptive powers have not yet been tamped down. It is a way of thinking
that is primarily characterized by imagination and action.
In What is Called Thinking?, Heidegger first translates the Greek word
“noein” with the phrase “paying attention” (In-die-Acht-nehmen), and says
that it is a kind of “active” perception, but he later emends the translation to
“taking-to-heart” (nous bedeutet… sich zu Herzen nimmt) and notes that the
site of nous in the Homeric period was the heart. He goes on to say this heart-
felt attention to matters is similar to what we mean when we say wild animals
are able to sniff out (Witterung) the situation.55
In fact, noein probably derives from “to sniff,” the most reliable sense, but
soon became associated with “sight,” designating a trustworthy or accurate
level of this less reliable sense. In the Homeric age, noein has two basic aspects.
First, it means the ability to instantly comprehend a situation and imagine the
implications, e.g. when Menelaus and Paris first eye each other on the battle-
field, they see their long-awaited destinies begin to unfold. This vision of the
future is both far-reaching and comprehensive. It is also variable: not in terms

52
Zeami 1984a: 58. A Noh actor begins training at the age of five. The maxim comes from
Zen Buddhism.
53
Safranski 2002: 1.
54
GA 4: 71–72.
55
GA 8: 206 and 210.
 Phenomenology of Japanese Architecture 155

of accuracy but rather in terms of values. One culture may view a redwood
forest with reverence, another may see it as affordable lawn furniture. Second,
about half the mentions of nous/noein in Homer involve emotional excite-
ment that translates thought directly into action, especially when it involves
the apprehension of something concrete, e.g. Menelaus, filled with bloodlust,
advances at the sight of Paris, while Paris, nauseated by fear, shrinks back.56 It
is this connection with emotional urgency and action that distinguishes noein
from similar words such as idein and gignôskein, which are more concerned
with observation and identification of a situation. For the less intelligent, a
grasp of the situation usually involves sifting through (kritein) contradictory
evidence. For this reason, noein became confused with calculation, for which
the emotional component was seen as more of a hindrance than an advantage.
Stripped of its imaginative and emotional components, noein was steadily
aligned with other rational functions such as deduction and demonstration.
This neutering of the potency of noein was continued in modern philosophy
so that intelligence came to mean a dispassionate scientific observation of
objective reality rather than a poetic vision of the measure.
Zeami says that performers need to develop riken no ken, literally the “see-
ing of detached perception.”

[…] an actor must come to have the ability to see himself as the specta-
tors do, grasp the logic of the fact that the eyes cannot see themselves,
and find the skill to grasp the whole—left and right, ahead and behind.
If an actor can achieve this, his peerless appearance will be as elegant
as that of a flower or a jewel and will serve as living proof of his under-
standing.57

This kind of seeing is necessary because the Noh actor is denied the use of
most of his other senses. Hearing is muffled by a heavy wig, and a Noh actor
should bend his body forward from the hips to the point of almost toppling
over. This is done to thrust the mask as far forward as possible. The mask is a
great impediment to normal seeing. It is not worn on the face but rather in
front of it so that the eye holes provide only pinhole views of the stage. The
separation of the eye holes is not wide enough for parallax vision, so it is dif-
ficult to know one’s exact relation to a stage property even if one sees it. If an
actor is playing a female role, then the mask will be positioned so high on the
face that the actor is only able to glimpse the world through the nose holes.
Furthermore, a Noh mask changes expression according to its inclination.
Most of the time, the mask must look straight ahead. If the actor loses his
position on the stage, he cannot look around to find the edge. Young actors
sometimes fly off the edge of the stage into the audience. In fact, part of the

56
Von Fritz 1945: 223–225.
57
Zeami 1984b: 81.
156 Michael Lazarin

training of young actors is to be suddenly thrown off the stage by their teach-
ers so as to overcome the fear of falling.
Every aspect of the Noh performance is structured so as to deny normal
perception and the normal lived experience of the body. Thus, when Zeami
speaks of “detached perception,” he does not mean some mystical superhu-
man power; instead, he means that the actor must enable his powers of pro-
prioception that have atrophied through over-reliance on seeing and hearing
in the usual sense. Detached perception is really about recovering our original
proprioceptive powers—powers which the wild animals still use to “sniff out”
the situation, but which we have lost living in the overly regulated and over-
structured spaces of the urban environment.
According to Japanese Noh actors, the object of these proprioceptive pow-
ers is the “ma” of the theater. They say that when they can sense this “ma,”
their “heartfelt mind” (kokoro) is at peace and they no longer fear falling off
the stage. They are able to move more freely and explore more improvisational
movements. They also say that it is this “ma” that allows them to feel the
response of the audience and whether or not the passion of their role is being
conveyed in an appropriate way. In general, the detached perception of “ma”
allows the actors to experience “en” with the architecture of the stage and the
emotional atmosphere of the audience, but not every theater possesses “ma.”
Since all the stages are nearly the same dimensions and constructed out of
the same materials, the difference between one and another must be subtle,
but the actors say it is definite and knowable (bestimmter und erkennbarer).
To achieve this certainty, the most important thing is to “keep the beginner’s
mind.”
If someone tries to grasp it by stealth, he holds
A dream in his hand, and he who uses force
To make himself its peer, it punishes.
Yet often it takes by surprise
A man whose mind it has hardly entered.58

Conclusion

Heidegger’s analysis of poetic dwelling, especially the emphasis on the

temporal dimension of building and dwelling and their circular relations of
interdependence, goes a long way toward providing a constitutional analysis
of what is happening in the experience of Japanese “en” in bridging structures
such as the engawa and hashigakari. Indeed, these architectural structures may
provide better examples of what he is getting at than Greek temples and Black
Forest farmhouses.

58
Hölderlin 1994: 421.
 Phenomenology of Japanese Architecture 157

In both of the examples of “en” described in this article, the architectural

aim is to avoid any explicit determination of in or out, here or there, pres-
ence or absence. According to the Japanese way of measuring, the span be-
tween two regions should be stretched out and blurred until they become a
natural continuity. Both the engawa and the hashigakari establish mysterious
spans that defy binary frameworks. They also aim at creating experiences of
transcendence of the ordinary phenomenal world based on the insight that
ultimate reality is impermanence. According to Japanese design principles,
architectural bridging structures should be less firm and accommodating;
guardrails should be more flimsy, routes more devious. Poetic dwelling in
these architectural bridging structures is a matter of noetic leaps rather than
logical connections. It is possible to know when an architectural arrangement
has “en” but it is difficult to explain and likely impossible to provide a normal
course of instruction for architects and city planners to design their projects
with a view toward establishing an experience of “en.” Given the emphasis on
the temporal dimension of Japanese architectural elements, meaningful dis-
cussions of these elements are more likely to come from narrative analysis than
spatial descriptions. The instructional lesson plans of the Noh theater provide
some ways to get through to this goal. I have mentioned two of these but there
are many more in the writings of Zeami. The first is to pay attention to the
jo-ha-kyū cadence in everyday lived experience. The second suggestion is to
deny the use of ordinary perception in order to develop latent proprioceptive
capacities which are necessary to experience the dynamic presence (Anwesen-
heit) of en. One Zen practitioner on the western side of Kyoto advises walking
with unguarded ease through the Sagano bamboo forest on the darkest nights
of the year.

Michael Lazarin
Faculty of Letters
Ryukoku University
Shichijyo, Omiya Shimogyo-ku
Kyoto 600-8268, Japan
[email protected]

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Images

The three images are scans of Meiji period (1868–1912) woodblock prints (51x18.5
cm.) by an unknown artist; the originals are owned by myself.