Perception of wildlife in japanese culture. Understanding Nature in Japanese Culture Understanding Nature in Japanese Culture

NATURE IN CULTURE... The worship of Nature, characteristic of all peoples in antiquity, took root among the Japanese and acquired further development thanks to the Shinto national religion, which deified different natural phenomena- mountains, rocks, waterfalls, trees, rivers ... This was also promoted by Buddhism, which became widespread in Japan since the 6th century. AD and asserting that everything in the world is the images of Buddha, everything requires deep reverence.

For the Japanese, Nature has remained the embodiment of the universal laws of the Universe, in which man is by no means the dominant particle. Unity with Nature helps people to gain a more correct understanding of things and themselves, and, in addition, gives true relaxation and light joy. This is the basis of the multifarious aesthetic and philosophical system of empathy with Nature, which gradually developed by the Heian era (VIII – XII centuries). Seasonal cyclicality is one of the main principles in it.

“Each pore has its own charm in the cycle of the seasons. The whole year is wonderful - from beginning to end, "Heian lady-in-waiting Sei Shonagon wrote in her Notes at the Head of the Bed.

Matsuo Basho (1644-1694) believed that the life of a person who is “friends with the four seasons”, in other words, who lives in harmony with the world, is morally perfect and artistically sublime.

The Japanese had certain customs and rituals associated with each season. Particularly famous were hanami (admiring flowers), tsukimi (admiring the moon) and yukimi (admiring the snow), united by a common term - "setsugekka" (according to the Chinese reading of hieroglyphs - "snow, moon, flowers").

"Snow, moon, flowers", personifying the beauty of the four seasons replacing each other, according to the Japanese tradition, personify beauty in general: the beauty of mountains, rivers, grasses, trees, endless natural phenomena, including human feelings, "- this is how he revealed this concept writer Kawabata Yasunari.

Nature was a part of human life, and the response to her condition was part of the etiquette of communication. To this day, it is generally accepted politeness in Japan to start a letter with a seasonal paragraph, that is, to say a few words about the weather and nature.

Snow, like other seasonal phenomena, has both a purely aesthetic meaning and a symbolic interpretation. Embodying winter and cold, he is the embodiment of darkness and death, and since everything in the world is interconnected and is in a cycle, snow is also a harbinger of the rebirth of life.

In painting and arts and crafts, motifs of pine and bamboo under the snow have become popular. Pine and bamboo since ancient times, even among the Chinese, were part of the benevolent system, symbolizing longevity, stamina, fortitude. Together with the plum, which blooms at the end of winter and is considered a symbol of purity, youthful beauty, these plants are called “three friends of cold winter”.

In Japanese winter poetry, playing with the whiteness of snow and plum flowers has always been a favorite theme.

The plum blossom has opened

And the snow fell asleep petals.

How heavy it is in my soul!

Nobunaga Kiyomoto

Blessed spring

Waiting with hope

Plum in the snow.

Komatsu Tinkiro

Japanese cherry blossom in the West is called mountain cherry or wild cherry. Her flowers, beautiful, delicate and fast-moving, are considered the personification of human life, the embodiment of the beauty of Japanese women and national symbol Japan.

The hieroglyph ka (hana) - flower, flowers - denotes all flowers, but its second meaning is "sakura flowers", and the concept of "hanami" by now mainly refers to admiring sakura.

In the perception of the Japanese, the word "khana" goes beyond the limits of a specific narrow concept. It denotes the best time, pride, the color of something, and is also included in a variety of complex words - "hanabanasy" (brilliant, brilliant), "hanagata" (theatrical star), "hanaome" (bride), "hanamuko" (groom) ...

Floral motifs are undoubtedly the most common in the art of this country. A special genre arose in painting - “flowers-birds”. It came from China, but took on a new sound in Japan, especially in connection with the seasonal rhythm, which was of great importance to the Japanese.

The poet Fujiwara no Teika in 1214 wrote "Poems about flowers and birds of twelve months", in which each month has its own pair - a plant and a bird. Later, the so-called flower calendar with symbolic overtones was formed, which had slight differences in different localities. It looked something like this: January - pine; February - plum; March - peach and pear; April - sakura; May - azalea, peony, wisteria; June - iris; July - "morning bindweed"; August - lotus; September - "seven grasses of autumn"; October - chrysanthemum; November - maple; December - camellia.

Poetic thinking and refined observation did not hinder the Japanese. This, in particular, is evidenced by the saying - "Rice balls are better than flowers", corresponds to the Russian - "Nightingales are not fed with fables." At the same time, the Japanese are close and understandable to a person who enjoys contemplating flowers, singing birds, enjoying a light breeze against the backdrop of a beautiful landscape, and admiring the moon.

By tradition, the autumn full moon was recognized as the most beautiful - in the eighth and ninth months after lunar calendar... On these days, offerings are made to the moon god Tsukiyomi - special rice cakes, fruits, autumn herbs. The moon is associated with all seasons. It is eternal and unchanging, regardless of whether it is in heaven or not, whether it is decreasing or arriving. She is a symbol of Truth.

Winter moon

You came out from behind the clouds.

You see me off

Aren't you cold from the snow?

Doesn't the wind shiver?

Myoe (1173-1232)

Per. T. Grigorieva

In Japan, it is believed that someone who does not perceive the beauty of Nature, especially the moon and rain, cannot be trusted in anything, since he has a "heart of stone".

The main feature of Japanese culture is associated with the diverse interaction, interpenetration and struggle of two principles - the natural world and the human world. At the same time, “the natural world was expressed through the image of man, ... then, on the contrary, the world of man was personified through the images of nature”. 9th century poet Otomo Yakamochi wrote:

When I miss home

And I spend the nights without sleep on the way,

Because of the spring haze I can't see

Green reeds where the cranes cry!

The nature of Japan is bizarre, harsh and restless. Large areas are occupied by mountains and are not suitable for agriculture. Frequent earthquakes and other natural disasters forced the Japanese from ancient times to build light dwellings that are not a pity to lose and can be quickly restored, and also taught a patient, non-hostile attitude to nature. The Japanese have never had the aspiration, characteristic of Europeans, to subjugate it, transform it, introduce into it a logical principle that is not typical for it. On the contrary, they are constantly looking for points of contact between man and nature, ways of harmony with it, which determined the aesthetic perception of the world, a sense of beauty that is organic to the entire Japanese culture, when every natural manifestation causes a desire to admire it and in some cases worship and deify.

This attitude towards nature, most likely, gave rise to the oldest religion Japan - Shinto(“The way of the gods”), the origin of which is still not entirely clear. Orientalist academician N.I. Konrad(1891 - 1970) associated the emergence of Shinto with agriculture, with its magic, which contains actions that must create conditions favorable for harvesting. Among such magical rites, the main place was occupied by the spring Action of Asking for a Harvest Year and autumn New Bread Testing Action.

For the actions, a certain place was chosen, which began to be considered the place of residence of the deity. At first, it could have been any corner of nature, and then some kind of sanctuary was erected here. Temples appeared much later, since the deities were not separated from nature, which made nature special in the eyes of the Japanese.

Katsushika Hokusai.

Fuji in Senju

The Shinto religion is very close to mythology, in which the world is presented as a single, undivided whole, which sets out views on the origin of the world, people, crafts and ancient history. In Shinto, it is argued that chaos reigned in the world at first. Subsequently, he was ordered, the sky was separated from the earth, the masculine from the feminine. As a result of the combination of these principles - the goddess Izana-mi and her husband Izanagi - the sun goddess Amaterasu, the moon goddess Tsukiyomi and the god of water and storm Susanoo were born. After many years of struggle, the goddess Amaterasu remained in heaven, and her grandson Ninigi descended from heaven and began to rule the state of Izumo. The symbols of his power were a mirror (divinity), a sword (power) and jasper (loyalty of his subjects). It was from Niniga that the first emperor of Japan, the Mikado, descended, inheriting all three symbols of power. This explains the divine origin of power, the rest of the Japanese, according to Shinto, descended from other deities - komi - the spirits of heroes, ancestors, gods of nature, with whom the whole world is inhabited. It is precisely the descent from the deities that explains the idea of the Japanese about their mission in the world, the special qualities of their character, their life, their rules.

WITH Modern researchers distinguish five main principles of Shinto:

1. The statement that the world itself is good, perfect, since the world itself and everything in it is the result of its self-development.

Haniwa. Priestess.

Detail. VII century

... Understanding the natural power of life. It is believed that intimate relationships first occurred between the gods, so there can be no sin or guilt in them (in contrast to Christian ideas about original sin). For the Japanese, therefore, there is no strict division into "clean" and "unclean", on the contrary, he believes that "unclean" can be cleansed with the help of various rituals and then accepted as a national tradition.

3. The idea of the unity of nature and history. The original concepts of Shintoism do not divide the world into living and inanimate. Everything that surrounds people is alive: animals, plants, things, stones, etc., since the spirit lives in everything - kami. Therefore, divine power should be sought not in the other world, but in the surrounding world.

4. Recognition of polytheism arising from previous views. Since deities live in every natural phenomenon, each settlement has its own local, clan, tribal deities. In the X century, for example, a list of Shinto gods was compiled, there were 3132 of them.

5. The Kami did not give birth to all people on earth, but only to the Japanese, therefore, only a Japanese can belong to Shinto and worship its deities, although Shinto does not forbid a Japanese to practice any religion other than Shinto.

The main Japanese holidays are based on these views, many of which are associated with agricultural work, calendar dates, and historical events. Many seasonal holidays are simply dedicated to various manifestations of nature, its smallest details. These are spring, summer, autumn and winter holidays, during which it is customary to contemplate nature, “admire” it. Japanese writer Kamo no Chomei(1153-1216) wrote: "... all the desires of life are [with me] only in the beauties of the changing seasons." The poet echoes him Dogen:

Flowers - in spring,

The cuckoo is in the summer.

In the fall, the moon.

Cold clean snow -

V An important place is occupied by the holidays of admiring the blooming sakura (this concept means more than a dozen varieties of trees blooming only 5 days a year), snow, Mount Fuji, and the moon. The ability to contemplate nature, absorbing its beauty, is the most poetic aspect of the Japanese relationship with the world.

WITH

Silver Pavilion in Togudo.

Jishouji. Kyoto. 1486 year

With the arrival of Chinese religious teachings in Japanese culture, Shintoism did not cease to exist, it absorbed the main aspects of Chinese teachings, transformed them on the basis of Japanese traditions and literally dissolved in its own culture. Taoism and Buddhism penetrated Japan through Korea since the 6th century. Taoism with its idea of "non-action" became the basis of many forms of man's relationship with nature and himself. Buddhism was perceived by the Japanese in the form of Mahayana, but its main provisions were adapted to the Japanese worldview. The modern Japanese scholar of Buddhism Kishimo Hiedo believes that the main thing for Buddhism in Japan is its idea of liberation from suffering, and only those events of reality that are perceived by a person as suffering are considered suffering.

Therefore, the overcoming of suffering is in the person himself, in his rational understanding of suffering. The Japanese believe that only vague worries, and not a variety of desires (as classical Buddhism believes), cause suffering. Therefore, there is no need to get rid of desires, it is enough just to comprehend their reason and shift the emphasis from a negative attitude towards it to another plane: to see or benefit from everyday situations.

The assimilation of Buddhism in Japanese culture gave rise to a new phenomenon of a religious, philosophical and socio-psychological nature - Zen Buddhism. Term zen(Skt. "concentration, contemplation") means self-absorption, as a result of which a sudden illumination occurs - satori . To achieve this state, a variety of rituals have been developed that involve concentration, sometimes meditation in the process of “admiring” some phenomena or states of nature. On the basis of Zen, the tea ceremony, the art of arranging flowers, the art of creating gardens and parks, many martial arts that require a special form of "feeling" a person in everything that surrounds him and in his actions arose and developed. Confucianism in Japanese culture was initially perceived by the nobility as a guiding and almost secret doctrine, but gradually spread to the entire system of people's behavior in society, including all those principles that Confucius prefaced to the upbringing of a “noble man”.

All the features of religious views in Japan can be summarized as follows: for them there was no supreme deity, but the world itself, with its forms and modes of existence, became an expression of the divine presence, which determines the aesthetic views of the Japanese on the world.

D For the aesthetic perception of the world, it is characteristic to treat it as a harmonious unity of external and internal, and this unity can be traced in all aspects of reality: in nature, work, the world of things. Japanese aesthetics distinguish four types of beauty: sabi, wabi, shibui, and yugen.

WITH

Tsuji Yojiro.

Tea pot

ceremony.

Iron. XVI century

abi translates as "patina". This is the beauty of the natural, traces of time left on objects. It is believed that sabi occurs when a person contemplating a work of art or object suddenly has a sense of the era. For example, cracks in the dishes for a tea ceremony allow you to feel the connection of times, the transience and eternity of the world. This is eternal nature with traces of this eternity on stones, wood, or in the most eternal change of its states. This feeling presupposes inner concentration, absence of noise, crowd, brightness.

Wabi - this is the beauty of the everyday, ordinary, the utilitarian beauty of objects and at the same time - the beauty of everyday work, the efforts that each person makes, realizing his Tao in this world. Wabi can also be understood as poverty, poverty, or proud loneliness. For the Japanese, poverty is not humiliating, and wabi allows him to find a certain moral ideal, a sense of inner forces opposing the harshness of life. "Under normal circumstances, wabi encourages many Japanese to settle for modest housing, a plate of vegetables for lunch and dinner, and simple clothing." Even in wealthy houses, there is a gravitation towards the familiar and everyday, devoid of luxury and giving a sense of aesthetic pleasure.

Shibuy - the combination of naturalness and everyday life in any objects and actions. “This is not beauty in general, but the beauty inherent in the purpose of this object, as well as in the material from which it is made ... A cup is good if it is convenient and pleasant to drink tea from it and if at the same time it retains the original charm of clay that has been in the hands of a potter ”.

Yugen(“Inner depth, innermost”) “embodies the mastery of a hint or subtext, the charm of reticence” [ibid., P. 40]. Yugen is the highest form of inner and outer harmony, a manifestation of spiritualized beauty in things, actions and art.

Understanding the habitat from a historical perspective is essential characteristic a particular culture. The authors of this collection analyze various aspects of understanding nature in Japan. The analysis is focused on religious thought, poetry, modeling of nature in garden art, cinema, dynamics of perception of natural semantics, attitude to forests in modern Japan and Russia. For anyone interested in Japanese culture.

Book chapters

Edited by: E. I. Pivovar M .: RGGU, 2011.

Materials of the annual international scientific forum dedicated to urgent problems humanities.

This important new book offers the first full-length interpretation of the thought of Martin Heidegger with respect to irony. In a radical reading of Heidegger "s major works (from Being andTime through the ‘Rector“ s Address ”and the’ Letter on Humanism "to‘ The Origin of the Work of Art "and the Spiegel interview), Andrew Haas does not claim that Heidegger is simply being ironic. Rather he argues that Heidegger "s writings make such an interpretation possible - perhaps even necessary.

Heidegger begins Being and Time with a quote from Plato, a thinker famous for his insistence upon Socratic irony. The irony of heidegger takes seriously the apparently curious decision to introduce the threat of irony even as philosophy begins in earnest to raise the question of the meaning of being. Through a detailed and thorough reading of Heidegger "s major texts and the fundamental questions they raise, Haas reveals that one of the most important philosophers of the 20th century can be read with as much irony as earnestness. The irony of heidegger attempts to show that the essence of this irony lies in uncertainty, and that the entire project of onto-heno-chrono-phenomenology, therefore needs to be called into question.

The article is devoted to the concepts of technology in the works of the brothers Ernst and Friedrich Georg Junger. The problem of the relationship between technology and freedom is considered in the broad context of German criticism of culture at the beginning of the 20th century. and debates about technocracy before and after World War II.

T. Oriental studies. Novosibirsk: Novosibirsk State University, 2005.

The collection presents the works of the "Oriental Studies" section of the XLIII International Scientific Student Conference "Student and Scientific and Technological Progress", held at Novosibirsk State University in 2005.

The analysis of a modern society permeated by media is carried out from the standpoint of an ethnomethodological approach and is an attempt to answer the cardinal question: what are the observed orderings of events broadcast by mass mediators. The study of rituals proceeds in two main directions: firstly, in the organizational and production system of the media, focused on continuous reproduction, which is based on the transmission model and the distinction between information / non-information, and, secondly, in the analysis of the perception of these messages by the audience, which is the realization of a ritual, or expressive, model, the result of which is a shared experience. This means the ritual nature of modern media.

The book contains complete and comprehensive information on the history of imperial Russia - from Peter the Great to Nicholas II. These two centuries became the era when the foundations of the power of Russia were laid. But it was this time that led to the fall of the empire in 1917. The text of the book, sustained in the traditional manner of chronological presentation, includes fascinating inserts: “ Characters"," Legends and rumors "and others.

Humanity is experiencing a change in cultural and historical eras, which is associated with the transformation of network media into the leading means of communication. The consequence of the “digital split” is changes in social divisions: along with the traditional “haves and have-nots,” there is a confrontation between “online (connected) versus offline (unconnected)”. In these conditions, traditional intergenerational differences lose their significance, the decisive factor is belonging to one or another information culture, on the basis of which media generations are formed. The paper analyzes the various consequences of settling in: cognitive, arising from the use of "smart" things with a friendly interface, psychological, generating network individualism and increasing privatization of communication, social, embodying the "paradox of an empty public sphere." Role shown computer games as “substitutes” of traditional socialization and education, the vicissitudes of knowledge that is losing its meaning are considered. In conditions of an excess of information, the most scarce human resource today is human attention. Therefore, the new business principles can be defined as attention management.

In this scientific work the results obtained in the course of the implementation of the project No. 10-01-0009 “Mediarituals”, implemented within the framework of the Program “Science Foundation of the National Research University Higher School of Economics” in 2010-2012, were used.

A.V. Aistov, Leonova L.A. In the morning Bumpy flap. P1. WELCOME TO ORDER ORDER, 2010. PT - P1 / 2010/04.

The work analyzes the factors of choosing the status of employment (based on the data of the Russian monitoring of the economic state and health of the population in 1994-2007). The analysis performed does not reject the assumption of the forced nature of informal employment. The work also investigated the effect of informal employment status on life satisfaction. It was shown that the informally employed, on average, are more satisfied with their life compared to the officially registered workers.

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- Introduction

Introduction

More than two thousand years ago, the emperor wanted to know more about his country. It was, of course, impossible to visit all corners on your own, so dozens of educated people were sent from the capital to all provinces in order to study local conditions and attractions, and then depict them in miniature. But these should not have been drawings, but visual mock-ups showing, on a reduced scale, mountains, rivers, houses, livestock and even people. At his palace, the emperor ordered to prepare a wide marble platform, resembling a map of the country in its outlines. It was on this huge stand that the brought landscapes of the provinces were to be placed. The emperor's order was exactly executed, and since then he made it a habit to walk around the site every morning, looking at the beauty of his country. The models were named "penzhin". They were periodically updated with seasonal adjustments.

As is often the case, the habits of the bosses were quickly adopted by subordinates. The creation of man-made landscapes became fashionable, and after a while, their own penjins appeared in the houses of officials, scientists, and wealthy merchants. The practice of creating miniature landscapes depicting a small homeland, a mountain or sea view that attracted a lot, has survived to this day. This art has come a long way from ancient Penjins to modern installations. As it developed, it diversified.

The stone-sand compositions began to include living nature - specially reduced trees and bushes, moss, grass. Whole schools of followers of this art were formed, inclined towards one direction or another - bonseki, suiseki, saikei, bonkei, bonsai.

Sansuiga (Japanese paintings of mountains and waters), landscape painting, one of the three main genres of painting in the Far East (China, Korea and Japan), along with jinbutsuga (portrait and genre painting) and katega (paintings of flowers and birds). By the 5th century, theoretical artists formulated the main tasks landscape painting... The landscape was conceived as an expression of philosophical principles, while simultaneously interpreting the beauty of the surrounding nature. However, only artists of the Song Dynasty era embodied these tasks in their works. The main types of composition were established and techniques for depicting stones and rocks, trees and mountain peaks were developed.

Together with Zen Buddhism, the Chinese culture of the Song and Yuan dynasties came to Japan, including the Chinese monochrome ink painting, which is so valued by Zen monks. Early landscape painters such as Shubun of Sekokuji Monastery used motifs borrowed from Chinese monk painters and artists from the court painting academy to depict idealized lyrical landscapes. A follower of Shubun and his student Sesshu moved to a more dramatic style in landscape painting. The 16th century demand for larger wall paintings led to a transformation in landscape painting unique to Japan. Artists painted walls and screens in castles and monasteries, founding Japan's first professional painting schools.

A clear achievement in this field was the work of Kano Motonobu. In the 18th century, the traditions of the Chinese "southern school" were revived in landscape painting by the artists of the "nanga" school - Ike no Taiga and Yesa Buson. At the same time, the interest in painting from life among Japanese artists such as Tani Bunte, Maruyama Oke and Hokusai allowed them to move away from the conceptual landscape of the sansuiga to the realistic depiction of scenic views, which are called "fukeiga".

Japanese wildlife artists appeared in ancient Japan in the early 14th century. The popular Chinese mountain-water genre was called sansuiga here. It's natural to be able to write so skillfully mountain landscapes and the Japanese learned animals from their Chinese neighbors. The monks Kitsuzan Mingo (1352-1431) and Taiko Josetsu were among the first to depict wildlife. It was thanks to these pioneers that the great Sesshu (1420-1506) appeared, as well as Eitoku and Hasegawa Tohaku (1539-1610). One of the latter's masterpieces, The Pine Forest, depicting ancient pines through fog, is kept at the Tokyo National Museum. The tradition of depicting wildlife in Japanese landscape painting since ancient times has been closely associated with poetry, landscape poetry and has been embodied in the principle of haiga (poeticized painting), which is used in painting and poetry on equal terms. It was combined with such Japanese folk customs as "tski" - admiring the full moon in autumn, "yukim" - admiring the first snow in winter, "sakuramankai" - admiring the cherry blossom - sakura in early spring.

The depiction of wildlife in ancient Japan was preached by the "kano school" dating back to the 15th century. Its most prominent landscape painters were the 17th century painters, the brothers Kano Tanyu and Kano Yasunobu (one of the most famous works the last - "Pheasant on a willow"). Also worth noting is Toichi Sekkoku - “Winter Landscape. In Search of the Wild Plum "(1772) and" Mountains in Winter ". In the painting by Watanabe Kazaea (1793-1844) - " Autumn landscape»Depicts a small figurine of the artist among the sad autumn mountains. The work of Mori Tetsuuzai - "Monkeys in Autumn" (1775), kept in State Museum arts of the peoples of the East in Moscow. An unsurpassed masterpiece is the painting by Kano Toshyun - "Monkeys Catching the Reflections of the Moon in the Water." The work of Ogata Korin "Red and White Plum Flowers" is considered a world masterpiece. However, unlike the Chinese artists, their Japanese counterparts had one common favorite theme. This is the symbol of Japan, the wild mountain Fuji.

More than 1,300 temples are now dedicated to the goddess of Mount Fuji throughout Japan. Fuji created national park... The earliest known Japanese drawing of Mount Fuji dates from 1069, although no doubt Japanese artists began to paint it much earlier.

It became especially popular in the 19th century, when it gained fame in the Western world.

You need to see firsthand Japanese islands, in order to understand why the people inhabiting them consider nature to be the measure of their ideas about beauty. Japan is a land of green mountains and sea bays; the country of the most picturesque panoramas. Unlike the vibrant colors of the Mediterranean, which lies at roughly the same latitudes, Japan's landscapes are composed of soft tones, muffled by humidity. This restrained range can be temporarily broken only by some seasonal colors. For example, the spring bloom of azaleas or the flaming maple leaves in the fall.

Here you sometimes think that not only artists, but also nature itself - pines on coastal rocks, mirror mosaics of rice fields, gloomy volcanic lakes - follow the canons of beauty generally accepted in this country.

The purpose of the course work is to consider the model of perception of wildlife in the culture of Japan on the material of landscape painting, lyrics and garden art.

Coursework objectives:

Study the work of Japanese landscape painters of different eras;

Expand the theme of Japanese wildlife in lyric art;

Identify the main trends in the art of "contemplation" ("admiration").

Chapter 1 Japan Wildlife Artists

1.1 The creativity of Katsushika Hokusai

The founder of the wildlife genre in Japanese prints, the artist Katsushika Hokusai in 1831-1835 depicted the mountain in a variety of black-and-white and color prints, creating his famous album "One Hundred Views of Fuji" some time later. It was one of the most outstanding wildlife art projects in the world. The author of the engravings himself considered this mountain sacred. There are also known sets of his engravings "Thirty-six views of Mount Fuji", "Journey through the country's waterfalls", "Thousand views of the sea", "Snow, moon, flowers", "Flowers and birds", "Picturesque places, extraordinary views", praising the wild nature and its inhabitants.

One of the first to depict Fuji was the creator of the Japanese national landscape Sesshu. But if Fuji in Sesshu is mysterious and exorbitant and, hanging over a valley and a tiny village, embodies the incomprehensible essence of the universe, recreates the beauty of the wild, then in Hokusai it is endowed with a slightly different content. The master was inspired by the view of the mountain during one of his travels. Fuji is the most beautiful from the ocean side. Gentle spurs of mountains descend into the ocean, mountain rivers run down to it, and Fuji rises to the right of the road, on the horizon, comparable to the endless expanse of the ocean. She seems especially grandiose, emerging in the valley and towering over the fields. The base of Fuji melts in thick streaks of fog, and it seems that the mountain smoothly soars, and, like a giant bird, hovers over the country, guarding its peace and quiet. The heroine of ancient legends and tales, this mountain was revered at first as the goddess of Fire and later as the abode of Shinto. She was considered the beginning of heaven and earth, the pride of the nation and the basis of national prosperity. She was worshiped by Taoists, Buddhists, Shintoists, the wild mountain gradually became the embodiment of the high aspirations of the people and the best qualities of the nation. This is what Hokusai Japan Painting tried to show in his works. / Ed. Yakovlevoy A.M. - M .: Education, 1987 .-- p.-54. ...

Each engraving by Hokusai tells us something new about Fuji. We listen to the silence of the pine forest - "View of Fuji from Matsuyama", peer into the slightly quivering willow branches - "View of Fuji from a dam with willows", submit to the irresistible power of a rainy gray day, when its shape loses shape - "Fuji during downpour ". There are works that are almost fantastic - "The birth of Mount Hohensen on Fuji", "Fuji as a stand for the sun", "Fuji in the form of a snow slide."

The master draws a mountain overturned into a lake - "Flight of the wild geese", examines it through the cobweb - "Fuji through the web", or from afar - "View of Fuji from the river beyond the Yatsugadake mountains." In all of Hokusai's engravings, Fuji is depicted as a perfect mountain, an unbreakable constant, as an element of eternal wilderness, as a reflection of its eternal beauty. In his silence and greatness, Fuji shows a certain sacredness of the laws of life. His most outstanding images of Fuji are recognized as "Red Fuji", "Big Wave" (which became the national symbol of Japan) and "Mountain during a thunderstorm." The full name of Red Fuji is Victory Wind. Clear day". Imagine a mountain burning like a red glow against the backdrop of a sparkling blue expanse. The mountain is incomparable. We look down and realize the vastness of the sky and understand that the greenery on its slope is not grass, not a bush, but a tall forest. Fuji, as it were, grows before our eyes, becoming majestic like the world.

In contrast to "Red Fuji", the engraving "Mountain in a Thunderstorm" was made. Clouds have crept over the mountain, she tensed and ruffled, the flash of lightning cuts through the darkness. However, the most famous is the third engraving of the master - "The Big Wave". Mountain and water are essential elements of any classic Far Eastern landscape. But if in old Chinese or Japanese landscapes, water was present in the form of rain or waterfall, then Hokusai opened the ocean for Japanese wildlife artists. The very idea of a grand ocean wave against a mountain was bold and unusual. “Sages love water because it is changeable. The merciful love the mountains ”- said Confucius. The plot of the engraving, in the words of the Japanese art critic Noguchi, is "The Furious Activity of Nature." The wave “hangs over Fuji like the paw of a mad falcon. The sea resembles the dance of an eight-headed dragon. " main idea the pictures are that people are not at all opposed to the wild, they are barely distinguishable and are perceived almost like white spray foam. As Noguchi writes: "The Big Wave" evokes an ambivalent impression - ... the grandiose voice of the sea is opposed by the silence surrounding the mountain. "

In another outstanding series of works on wildlife - the album "Traveling through the country's waterfalls", published in 1829, Hokusai shows the unusual shapes of the waterfalls, the outlandishness of their outlines: streams of water then in thin streams spread over the rock - "Kiyetaki Kannon Waterfall by the Tokaido Road ", Then it cuts into space like a sharp blade -" It Waterfall ", or similar to the gnarled roots of a mighty tree -" Kurifuri Waterfall on Mount Kurokami ".

Yoshitsune Falls reminds of an ancient hero who bathed his horse in it, and Amida Falls resembles the head of Buddha. "The natural is beautiful only when it is unexpected" - such is the idea of the artist.

In their best works Hokusai moved away from traditional Far Eastern painting, combining elements of the work of both old Japanese and contemporary European artists. In his engravings, the wildlife of Japan received a new interpretation - as a symbol of the nation, as the embodiment of the best aspirations of the Japanese people, their spirit, as the pride of Japan.

Collections of Hokusai's prints were published in a series of albums called "Manga". Thus, the issue of 1817, completely devoted to wildlife, opened with a poetic foreword by the writer Sinituy Samba: “And on Mount Tsukuba, where we climbed, the snow sparkled with myriads of precious stones under the rays of the morning sun. After passing through the fog, we climbed to the Miho bank, where ancient pines grow in Siminoe. Then we stood in fear on the Kumeji Bridge and looked in amazement at the giant funi plants in Akita. This is how we learned all the greatness of the Universe, the power of the Universe. We saw the flowering of red maples, and the moon, and snow, and spring and autumn. Everything was brought together here, and it is difficult for us to describe the beauty of everything we saw, it was so majestic. The roar of the dizzying waterfall Ono continued to echo in our ears. "

In addition to Fuji and the Hokusai Falls, he painted other parts of the wildlife of Japan superbly. Engraving “Hitachi. Snow on Mount Tsukuba "depicts the harsh grandeur of a mountain on which there is no vegetation, no man, and which is perceived as an image of a grandiose and mighty free nature. A huge black silhouette, similar to a giant beast standing on huge legs, is a rock in the diptych "Blurred Rock in Soshu Province." The Typhoon engraving is dedicated to the raging elements. Three quarters of the leaf is covered with white clouds of clouds hanging over the ground. In their breaks, like an eerie vision, there is a chaotic pile of sticks, boards, lifted into the air by a hurricane.

Pictures of wild animals and plants are good. The engraving "Wolf" depicts the beast against the background of the moon. The animal sits and howls: sharp claws and raised hair are clearly visible. The wolf seems to fit into the white circle of the moon. The landscape with rare bushes gives the impression of something wild and harsh.

In Running Tiger, Hokusai showed a tiger running, sweeping away everything in its path. Raised by a whirlwind, leaves and branches rush after him. The strength and power of a wild beast is felt. “If you want to draw a bird, you have to become a bird,” Hokusai said. Among his other famous images of wild animals and plants are: "Two cranes on a snow-covered pine tree", "Canary and peonies", "Dragonfly in flowers", "Butterflies and peonies", "Bee and chrysanthemums", "Lilies", "Orange orchids "," Irises ".

Hokusai can hardly be considered a pioneer in the landscape theme of ukiyo-e. Before him, Moronobu, Toyohara, Kiyonaga, Utamaro tried their brushes in landscape engraving. But only in the work of Hokusai did the landscape turn from an ordinary background for portraying beauties or actors in the open air into an independent genre, enchanting the viewer with the beauty of the surrounding wildlife.

Critically evaluating his work, Hokusai wrote: “Until the age of 70, I did not do anything significant. At 73, I finally grasped the structure of animals, insects and fish, the nature of plants and trees. Therefore, I can say that up to the age of 86 my art will develop and by the age of 90 I will be able to penetrate the very essence of art. By the age of 100, I will reach a magnificent level, and at 110 years old, every point, every line will be life itself. ”Ukiyo-e Art. // Japan today. - 2005. - No. 10. ...

1.2 Prints by Utagawa (Ando) Hiroshige

Another great Japanese wildlife artist was Utagawa (Ando) Hiroshige (1797-1858). He created a unique series of prints depicting the free nature of Japan: Famous Views of All Japan, Twenty-Eight Views of the Moon, Fifty-Three Stations of the Tokaido Road, Eight Views of Omi Province, More than Sixty Views of Provinces, Thirty-Six views of Mount Fuji ”,“ Snow, Moon, Flowers ”,“ Flowers and Birds ”.

From the famous series "Twenty-Eight Views of the Moon", time has preserved only two masterpieces. One of them is called "Luna-bow", that is, a month that resembles a bow for shooting. The rocks of the mountain gorge rising to the sky are connected at the top by a fragile bridge. The sullen immobility of the wild gorge is disturbed by a fast stream and the sparkling sickle of the month. Below the top edge of the bridge, a Chinese poem comments on the drawing:

The pre-dawn month flies

Among thousands of trees.

The river of autumn flows

Among the many faces to the West.

Another engraving "The Moon for autumn leaves and a waterfall "a huge disc of the moon emerges from behind the blue strip of the waterfall, which carries with it the red leaves falling from the maple tree hanging over the water.

The series "Six Tamba Rivers" is devoted to the theme of beauty of the six Japanese rivers of the same name Tamagawa ("pearl river"), traditional for Japanese poetry and painting.

In the winter landscape "Mountains and Snow on the Kisoi Kaido Road", the silhouettes of inaccessible rocks, with their severity and severity, give the engraving a symbolic character.

“Nature is so beautiful! - the artist never tired of repeating. “Even if you visit the same place several times, it seems completely different each time.”

Such masterpieces of Hiroshige as Naruto's Whirlpools in Awa (1853-1856), Hakone. Mountain Lake "," Evening Snow on Mount Hira "," Kameyama. Snow in clear weather "(1833-1834)," Mountains in the snow in the upper Fujigawa River "(1841-1842)," Rocks over Lake Hakone "," View of Hakon "," Inum Pass in Kai Province "," Clear Weather after snowfall ”,“ Kameyama ”.

The great master could not ignore the wild nature of Mount Fuji with his attention. Known for his works such as "View of their Hakone", "Lake Suva in the Shinanoi province", "Fuski River".

The artist not only successfully worked in the genre of "mountains-water", but also "flowers-birds", assuring that in one tree he can hear the breath of the forest, and in one flower he can catch the scent of a meadow (Vinogradova, 2004). His masterpieces are known as "An Owl on a Pine Branch" (1932), "Magpie on a Blooming Camellia", "A Sparrow over a Camellia Covered in Snow", "A Reed in the Snow and a Wild Duck."

As art critic V. Dashkevich rightly writes, in the works of Hiroshige, one can always feel the philosophical Buddhist concepts of the endless variability of the wild world, where there is no stop and no end. Hence, in his engravings, asymmetry, understatement and incompleteness. “Is it possible to admire cherries only once in the midst of flowering and the full moon only in a cloudless sky? After all, yearning for the moon, hidden by the shroud of rain, or sitting at home and not seeing the steps of spring, thinking about it - all this, too, cannot but excite us with its charm. Much touches us both in the branches, which are about to be covered with blossoming flowers, and in the garden that crumbles and withers ... Everything in the world has its own charm both in its beginning and in its end. " Quoted from: P.A. Lastochkina Nature in the art of Asia. - M .: Education, 2004..

Hiroshige introduced genre motifs into the landscape, which on some sheets actually erased the line between landscape and everyday sketches. In popularity, it rivaled Hokusai's masterpieces from the "Thirty-six Views of Fuji" series. The increased demand for Hiroshige's landscapes led to the fact that the artist returned to the same subjects 20 times over the next years, making some changes each time, giving images from a different angle of view, changing the format, etc. Therefore, the first version of the series, hereinafter referred to as by specialists and amateurs like the "Big Tokaido", in many respects differed from the series printed by the publisher Marusei Reisho in a horizontal format, or from the same series of graphic sheets in a vertical format (1853). The engravings of the Fifty-Three Stations of the Tokaido series laid the foundation for the national lyrical landscape of Tokutaro - Ichiyusai - Ichiryusai. // Japan today. - 2003. - No. 11. ...

Chapter 2 The Art of Wildlife Viewing in Japanese Culture

2.1 Suiseki and Bonseki

When studying history, literature and folklore, it is possible to establish two main sources of development of Japanese culture, one of them is love for nature and the second is the scarcity of material resources. The Japanese love of nature is similar to the feeling that children have for their parents, admiring them and at the same time fearing them.

Although culture is usually viewed as the antithesis of nature, the main characteristic of Japanese culture is that it is a nature-imitative culture, that is, built on the model of nature, and thus in stark contrast to the culture of other Asian countries, especially China Shunkichi Akimoto Studying the Japanese way of life. - M .: Education, 1961..

Japan became acquainted with the first samples of penjins only at the beginning of the 7th century, when an embassy from China arrived at the court of Empress Suiko. Among the many gifts to the Japanese throne were the Penjins. The Japanese began to call them in their own way - bonkei (landscape on a tray). Bonkei's classic panoramic landscapes were made from clay, rocks, sand, and small plants, both dry and living. But even then it was possible to discern the preferences of individual artists in the selection of source materials. So, bonseki (literally: stones on a tray), landscapes made exclusively of inanimate material: stones and sand, as well as the stones themselves, due to their unusual shape or texture, became objects of admiration, gained immense popularity. Such stones were called suiseki (a word made up of two hieroglyphs - "water" and "stone"). Indeed, unlike the Chinese collections, where, as a rule, stones with sharply marked edges, holes, chips, depressions resembling small grottoes fell, the Japanese preferred a calmer texture. They liked the stones, as if rolled in water. They were collected in the beds of dry streams, on the sea coast, as well as in deserts, where suiseki were formed under the influence not of flowing water, but of a dry wind, which over many millennia could give the stones an unexpected look.

Suiseki were not valued for the high cost of the minerals that form them. A simple cobblestone could become infinitely valuable and unique. The main thing is that with its shape, color, texture, it reminds the viewer of something else, sometimes subtle, but disturbing memory and feelings. There are many suiseki, in the outlines of which you can see the contours of a mountain, an island, a waterfall, a stolen hut, an animal, a person, and even a Buddha. The sizes of these stones vary from a few centimeters to several decimeters. Most often, suiseki fits easily in the palm of your hand.

Over time, a classification of such stones was developed. Among them were stones-mountains (reminiscent of volcanoes, mountain ranges, peaks in snow caps), stones-plateaus, stones-waterfalls, stones-objects (a hint of the figure of a man, animal, bird, fish, insect, ship, bridge). In addition, suiseki differed in color (the Japanese prefer shades of black most of all), the nature of the surface (stones whose veins formed a flower pattern were especially appreciated), and the place of discovery.

The rules provide for two options for arranging: placing stones on a tray covered with a layer of sand (suiban), or on a wooden stand (daiza). The choice depends on the characteristics of the stone. "Mountains", "plateaus", "waterfalls" are perfectly complemented by a sandy pillow, as if growing out of it.

Initially, the art of admiring stones was intended for a narrow circle of people - the emperor and his courtiers, who were able to appreciate the subtle nuances of beauty. Emperor Go-Daigo (1288-1339) became one of the avid suisekists. With the growth of trade exchanges with China, the ideas of Zen Buddhism, warmly received by the samurai class, began to penetrate from the mainland to Japan. The art of suiseki very clearly reflected the canons of the new religion - simplicity bordering on asceticism, meditation and intuitive insight. Under the influence of Buddhist monks, admiring stones, looking for them hidden meaning has become a method of spiritual self-improvement. So suiseki entered the life of hundreds of thousands of samurai families Fosco Maraini Japan: lines of continuity. - M .: Education, 1971.

Only the lifting of the bans on communication with foreigners, which followed the Meiji restoration (1868), opened the way for supplies from abroad. However, many aristocrats by that time had lost their former prosperity, and the expensive hobby for stones began to gradually subside. Only in the twentieth century, interest in suiseki flared up again, fueled by the fashion for this art, which swept a number of Western countries. All over the world associations of suiseki lovers began to arise.

The art of bonseki developed in parallel, although it is very difficult to draw a line between it and suiseki. Indeed, building blocks works of art in both cases become stones and sand, laid out on a relatively small tray. The difference, perhaps, is only in the fact that in one case the sand plays the role of a pillow that sets off the grace of the stone, and in the other - it is a full-fledged element of the work. Correspondingly arranged layers of sand now create a picture of the sea licking the foot of a rocky island, then snow falling asleep on an icy mountain top, or a stream noisily making its way through a stone ridge of a river roll. From this it becomes clear that captious attention with which lovers of bonseki select sand for their works. As a rule, there are nine types of sand in use - from coarse grains to the smallest powder. So, to designate river banks, coarse dark sand is needed, and the current is associated with stripes of lighter and finer sand. There are also proven techniques for reproducing the reflection of Mount Fuji in the surface of a lake or, say, a crane wedge flying over a river. The contrast of shades of dark stone and white sand on the black surface of the lacquered tray enhances the realism of the image, at the same time, forcing the viewer's mind to look for something unsaid, hidden in what he saw.

To create these paintings, a minimum of technical means is required - a small spoon, a bird's feather - and the artist's endless patience. The fact is that sand waves are not fixed by some kind of vegetative or chemical composition... An unsuccessful movement, a slight draft in the room, and the picture, created with great difficulty, ceases to exist. Sometimes beginners resort to using adhesives, but true masters treat such a "trick" with condemnation. Bonseki are created as purely temporary compositions, the life of which is calculated in hours, at best - in days. At the same time, the artist seeks to reflect in the stone-sand landscape not only his mood, but also the characteristic features of the season, the state of the weather, the time of day. In this, you can also see something of Eastern philosophy: the image of the eternal materials (stone and sand) of the variability of the moment.

It should be noted that, despite its close proximity to other forms of landscape miniature - suiseki, bonkei, bonsai, the art of bonseki in its primary source is directly related to religion. Even at the inception of this type of fine art, the "mountains" that arose on the tray symbolized either Khoraisan, which, in the minds of the followers of Taoism, was an island eternal youth, or Mount Sumera, sacred to all Buddhists. Later, these sensations were supplemented and enriched by the views of Japanese Shintoists. As a result, bonseki became a kind of mirror in which an inquiring mind could try to consider the heavenly and earthly foundations of life, the place of man, and in particular his own, in the system of the universe.

The further development of bonseki is directly related to the gardening art of Japan. After all, the famous philosophical rock gardens, including the garden of the Ryёanji Temple in Kyoto, can be seen as exaggerated bonseki.

Both suiseki and bonseki can be considered the quintessence of the canons that determine the development of the national art of Japan. Most of the foundational principles of Japanese aesthetics are easy to discern here. The stones, not touched by the sculptor's hammer, but retaining their natural appearance in full, do not serve as a real picture of existence, but only hint at some kind of phenomenon or image. The incompleteness of the image opens up endless possibilities for its personal interpretation. The most suitable for these types of art are stones, whose colors seem to break through from the depths to the surface, as if there is a source of light inside the stone.

Without deep immersion in concepts such as wabi (the aesthetic and moral principle of avoiding the noise and luxury of light into the melancholic loneliness of self-knowledge), sabi (preference for true antiquity over the values of modernists), shibui (elegance of the simple), yugen (the search for truth not by logical constructions of reason, but through a sudden insight), practicing the art of suiseki and bonseki is impossible.

Unfortunately, the art of "stones on a tray" has lost its popularity over time and is now almost on the verge of extinction. Although the once famous schools of bonseki art - Enzan, Hosokawa, Sekishu, Chikuan and Hino - continue to function in Japan, there are hardly a few hundred people in the country who devote themselves to this business with soul and understanding. For most of the bonseki, if it has survived, it is only as a form of playful crafts, entertainment in their free time, or as a means of relieving the stresses that accumulate during the working week of Suiseki and bonseki. // Japan today. - 2005. - No. 9. .

2 . 2 The art of bonsai and saikei

If only stones and sand serve as material for making a miniature landscape, we are talking about suiseki and bonseki, but if the author adds elements of wildlife to the composition - grass, moss, trees - then the terms bonsai and saikei should be used.

All the main directions and methods of composing an artificial landscape on a tray (bonkei) were born in China. The skill of bonsai (growing miniature trees in pots) is no exception, although many consider it a phenomenon related exclusively to Japanese culture. As evidenced by old manuscripts and drawings found on the walls of ancient Chinese burials, more than a thousand years ago, Chinese craftsmen learned to reduce the size of some types of vegetation tenfold. These graceful plants were then planted along the paths in the gardens of emperors or nobles. The Chinese began to add small trees to the penjins (miniature artificial reliefs made of stones and sand), giving additional authenticity to mini-landscapes.

This knowledge was received with interest in neighboring countries - Korea, Vietnam, Thailand. And they reached Japan only in the Kamakura era (1185-1333), along with other cultural borrowings from the continent that accompanied the spread of Buddhism, especially its Zen variety. We must pay tribute to the Japanese craftsmen, who seriously refined the skills of visiting craftsmen and turned the decorative techniques of foreign gardeners into a real art. It was the Japanese who made bonsai a self-sufficient art, ceasing to consider it only as one of the constituent components of the Chinese Penjin. Moreover, it was in Japan that this art, stepping over the fences of the imperial villas, became truly national.

This art reached its greatest popularity in the XVIII - XIX centuries... Then there was another surge between 1926 and 1940. And now many people are trying to uncover the secrets of bonsai, and not only in Japan, but it is more a hobby, a pastime, rather than a disinterested tribute to art. In Japan, the first public demonstration of mini-trees was held in October 1927 at metropolitan park Hibiya. Similar vernissages continued annually until 1933, after which the exhibition area was moved to the halls art museum in Ueno. And the western world got acquainted with bonsai much earlier - at the end of the 19th century. Several specimens of dwarf plants were exhibited in the Japanese pavilion at the World Exhibition in Paris (1889). But the 1909 exposition in London was met with protests. The British criticized the Japanese craftsmen for the "inhuman torture" of the trees.

The art of bonsai is based on the technique of artificially reducing the size of living plants Ovchinnikov V.V. Oak roots. - M .: Education, 1989..

Bonsai practice requires a lot of patience. To master the basic principles of growing miniature trees, you need to spend 5-10 years. It is said that it takes at least three years to learn how to properly water a bonsai. It is easy to understand that this art is more attractive to older people. It's not just about having free time and the ability to approach any work without fuss, which is only given by life experience. There is a certain symbolic connection between bonsai and immortality, because often a tree is passed on in a family from generation to generation along with the memory of those who planted and raised it. Bonsai can live for hundreds of years with good supervision. So, the most famous of the surviving specimens is a pine, the first owner of which was the shogun Iemitsu Tokugawa (1604-1651). It is not for nothing that pine is considered by the Japanese as a symbol of eternity.

Older bonsai specimens are valued more than younger ones. But age is not the only criterion here. The main thing is that the plant should make the intended artistic impression, correspond to the size of its container and be healthy. In the classification of bonsai, there are two main directions - koten (classical) and bunzin (informal). The classic assumes that the trunk of the tree should be thicker at the base and thinner at the top. Bundzin proceeds from the opposite criterion, which, it should be noted, can be very difficult to achieve. Real artist, and this is exactly how the masters of this art should be treated, he never seeks to duplicate what he saw in nature to the smallest detail. Working with a plant, he tries to express his own sense of the aesthetics of living things. A prototype can be, say, the scenery of a Kabuki theater performance, a grotesque illustration to ancient poems, your own idea of trees bending in a hurricane wind. But in any case, the bonsai should look natural, as if it has never been touched by a human hand.

A few words about the styles characteristic of this art: vertical, inclined, cascading (when the tree bends over the edge of the container and the trunk goes down), with a twisted trunk, with a double trunk (when a single trunk forks at the base), group (when the side shoots are under influenced by the master, they are formed so that they resemble a group of trees growing nearby), with a rocky base (when the roots appear especially beautifully on the stone).

There is one of the varieties of bonsai, which gradually buds from the mainstream, gaining independence. This is saikei. It differs from bonsai in that the composition of a miniature landscape on a tray is not built from one plant, but from several, and often belonging to different species. Saikei fans love to include herbs, including flowering ones, in their compositions. It is permissible to place small figures on a tray with saikei - people, animals, houses, bridges. The white sand symbolizes the flow of water at the foot of the trees. The size of such compositions requires larger trays, but they are smaller than the bonsai containers. That is, we are talking about a phenomenon that occupies an intermediate position between bonkei and bonsai. This is reflected in the name of the art, which consists of two hieroglyphs for "plant" and "species" World in miniature (Japanese art). / Ed. T.I. Avalova - Minsk: Art, 1999.

2.3 Gardening art and hanami

Gardening art is a unique phenomenon that represents a carefully developed philosophical and aesthetic system of understanding Nature as a universal model of the universe. Thanks to this, any Japanese garden - be it a medieval temple or a modern decorative one - contains, to one degree or another, an echo of the Absolute. Water, stones, trees, bushes, mosses, flowers, grasses are not just material for the gardener, but particles of the Universe that have intimate significance.

For the first time the word "niva" (garden) is found in "Nihongi" ("Annals of Japan", 720) as a designation of an empty space intended for the worship of gods. According to Shintoism, the whole world surrounding a person is inhabited by many deities living in huge stones, old trees, mountains, waterfalls, lakes, wells. Not only the objects themselves were honored, but also the space around them. A special attitude to space will become a fundamental principle in Japanese gardens.

From the middle of the 1st millennium A.D. NS. under the influence of Buddhism, the gardens have become a symbolic expression of the Buddhist universe. Its center was considered Mount Sumeru, which in the garden was marked by a small hill in the middle of a pond, repeating the sacred Lake Munetsunoti. The stones in the pond depicted nine islands and eight seas of the Buddhist cosmogonic myth.

Shinto and Buddhism formed the basic concept of the Japanese garden as such. In it figurative, capacious symbols are expressed the idea of the world order and the original harmony of the world. Gardens, like other art forms, have evolved in accordance with the passage of time and changes in society. But always in them the main elements were water and stones. Water is a symbol of negative, feminine, dark, soft yin power, and stones - light, masculine, positive, solid yang power. Their eternal opposition and indissoluble unity, according to the ancient dualistic concept, are the basis for the existence of the world.

In the Nara era (VIII century), when the influence of Chinese culture was great, the influence of mainland samples was also traced in the gardens. They were spacious, with large ponds for boating, with pavilions and gazebos.

The gardens of the Heian era (VIII-XII centuries) reflected the spread in Japan of the teachings of the Buddhist sect Jodo (Pure Land), which proclaimed the belief in Buddha Amida (Buddha of Western Paradise). Court aristocrats, among whom at this time the Chinese orientation was replaced by a tendency to form their own national culture, began to create gardens around their villas, which were perceived as the earthly embodiment of Amida's paradise. They reflected the refined spirit of the court culture, in which all manifestations of human life were aestheticized and poeticized, and met the need for lyrical inspiration and refined emotions from the beauties of Nature in the whirlwind of the seasons Fedorova M.Yu. Gardening art in Japanese culture. - M .: Art, 2005.

In the most famous Heian novel - "Genji-monogatari" ("The Tale of Prince Genji"), written by the lady of the court Murasaki Shikibu (10th century), there are constant references to gardens.

“No sooner had the simple cherries crumbled than the many-petalled ones blossomed, and after them the mountain cherries“ kabazakura ”were adorned with flowers. When they also faded, it was time for the wisteria. The departed mistress, penetrating into the soul of flowers, planted both early and late plants in the garden, and each blossomed in its own time. " (Translated by T. Sokolova-Delyusina.)

Huge impact on all Japanese culture from the end of the XIII century. Zen Buddhist sect began to render. The gardens of Zen monasteries began to purposefully express the idea of understanding Nature as the embodiment of the Absolute, Truth, that is, the spirit of Buddha. They organically integrated into the atmosphere of monastic life with its strict discipline and psychophysical exercises, which helped the adepts on their path to achieving "satori" (enlightenment). The gardens were created by famous Zen teachers, monks and artists close to these circles.

The Zen garden was no longer meant for walking as it had been. Its function was similar to landscape scrolls - to aid in the practice of contemplation. The tendency towards laconicism inherent in Japanese culture contributed to the reduction of the garden landscape. This is how the famous dry gardens appeared, in which the yin-yang forces continued to exist, but the real water was symbolically replaced by sand and gravel. All of them fascinate with their mysterious abstractness, but the garden of the Ryoanji Temple in Kyoto is the pinnacle of Japanese gardening art of that time.

In order to calm the mind, one turns to meditation. “Let's sit in silence and plunge into contemplation of the garden of stones ...” And then, as one of the abbots of this temple imagines, a person can see, instead of a platform with stones, an endless surface of water with protruding peaks of mountains or their own, towering above a veil of clouds ... "Concentrating on the motionless, one feels the movement of the higher rhythms."

Zen culture has created another wonderful version of the garden - a tea garden. The garden located in front of the entrance, or rather, leading to the entrance to the teahouse, acts as an important component in this ceremony, helping the participants to correctly tune in to the upcoming action. The aesthetics of the garden in this case is entirely consistent with the ideals of the Tea ceremony, based on the principles of simplicity, modesty, naturalness, discreet charm.

There is a known story about the great master of the tea ceremony Sen no Rikyu (16th century) and his son. Rikyu instructed his son to clean the garden. He conscientiously swept it there, washed the lanterns, the stones of the paths, but every time my father said that the cleaned up was still imperfect. When his son no longer knew what to do, Rikyu walked over to a maple that was red with autumn leaves and shook it. The bright stars of the maple leaves gave the whole garden a soulful poetry.

Loyalty to old traditions combined with new creative thinking allows both modern masters landscape design to create masterpieces to match the classic designs.

One of them is the Genji Garden, created in 1966 at the Rodzan Temple in Kyoto in memory of Murasaki Shikibu and her novel. According to the surviving information, there was once a house where the writer lived.

This is also a dry garden. Against the background of light gravel, there are green islands of moss of arbitrary outlines, reminiscent of clouds. In some places, bushes of purple bells are planted on them. The image of the garden combines touching tenderness and noble restraint. Behind the spectacular thoughtfulness of the composition lies a graceful symbolic subtext. Purple bells are called murasaki in Japanese. The discreet beauty of these flowers is worthy of the memory of Murasaki Shikibu. The cloud-shaped moss patches are related to Prince Genji. After talking about last days Genji and his passing away is followed by an unusual chapter, consisting of one title: "Hiding in the Clouds". An emptiness arises before the reader, from which everything comes and into which everything leaves.

Japanese gardens are a space for the elements and imagination, a kind of window into another reality. At the same time, they remain gardens in which a person can admire the endless beauty of Nature Japan from A to Z. - http://www.japantoday.ru. ...

"Hanami", admiring sakura blossoms, is the most beloved tradition of the Japanese. According to historians, the tradition of admiring sakura flowers originated at the imperial court in Kyoto during the Heian period (794-1185). But before this period, connoisseurs of beauty were more partial to the flowering plum ("ume"), the trees of which were brought to Japan from China and were considered a symbol of foreign culture. When the practice of sending envoys to China was abolished in 894, the imperial court began to value its own culture and traditions more. So over time, the sakura flower became more popular in Japan.

Admiring cherry blossoms is included in the list of official holidays and ceremonies. One of the most famous "khans" was conducted in 1598 by the military leader Toyotomi Hideyoshi. After achieving complete victory over the separatist princes and establishing control over the entire country, Hideyoshi led a 1,300-strong procession to the Daigo Shrine in Kyoto, which had a cherry blossom celebration. This event became a favorite subject of numerous poems and performances of the No Theater.

In the next century, ordinary people began to share more and more love for the "khans" of their masters. During the reign of the Tokugawa shogunate (1603-1867), many cherry trees were brought from Mount Yoshino (Nara Prefecture) to Edo to decorate the country's new political center. Thanks to the "sankin kotei" system established by the shogun, when every Japanese feudal lord was obliged to live in Edo for at least a year, a huge number of sakura trees were transported in baggage wagons to the capital from all over the country. At this time, new varieties of trees appear, which were bred as a result of both natural and artificial crossing. Now in Japan there are more than 300 types of sakura, although no more than 10 species are natural. Sakura flowers have also been a favorite subject of many famous artists. They appear in countless paintings, poems, and later in photographs and films, not to mention the fact that sakura is the most popular ornament for women's kimonos Hiroko Kimuro Sakura, sakura is everywhere you look. - http://www.ecoethics.ru. ...

For example, consider the famous Basho haiku (1644-1694):

Blooming cloud

And the evening bells

In Asakusa or Ueno?

Typical Japanese landscape: spring, pale pink haze all around cherry blossoms... The time of day is twilight. The sun has just disappeared, the colors are fading, but the objects around are still distinguishable. The time of day in the poem is indicated by the ringing of bells, which can only be heard in the evening when the bells of the Buddhist temples of Kaneiji in Ueno and Sensoji in Asakusa ring.

This poem was written by Basho in a hut on the banks of the Sumidagawa River, from where the poet could see the sakura blossoming around famous Buddhist temples. It is surprising that such a capacious landscape is given by only three lines, and this is the main advantage of the haiku:

In the garden where the irises have opened,

Chat with the old

my friend,

What a reward for a traveler!

(Matsuo Basho)

The constant threat of unforeseen natural disasters inherent in the nature of the Japanese islands has formed a soul among the people that is very sensitive to environmental changes. Buddhism has added here its favorite theme of the impermanence of the world. Both of these premises together led the Japanese art to the glorification of changeability, transience.

Rejoicing or sadness about the changes that time brings with it is inherent in all peoples. But perhaps only the Japanese were able to see the source of beauty in its fragility. It is no coincidence that they chose sakura as their national flower.

Spring does not bring with it to the Japanese islands that struggle of the elements, when rivers break open the ice chains and melt waters turn the plains into endless seas. The long-awaited time for the awakening of nature begins here with a sudden and violent outbreak of cherry blossoms. Its pink inflorescences excite and delight the Japanese not only with their multitude, but also with their fragility. Sakura petals do not wilt. Whirling merrily, they fly to the ground from the lightest breeze. They prefer to fall off still quite fresh than to give up their beauty at least V.V. Ovchinnikov. Sakura branch. - M .: Soviet writer, 1988. .

Poeticization of variability, fragility is associated with the views of the Zen Buddhist sect, which left a deep mark in Japanese culture. The meaning of the Buddha's teachings, Zen followers argue, is so profound that it cannot be expressed in words. It can be comprehended not by reason, but by intuition; not through the study of sacred texts, but through some kind of sudden insight. Moreover, contemplation of nature most often leads to such moments, the ability to always find agreement with environment, to see the significance of the little things in life.

Chapter 3 Wildlife in Japanese Landscape Lyrics

3.1 Depiction of nature in haiku

Haiku is one of the most popular traditional forms of Japanese poetry, an integral part of the national culture. This poetic branch arose over 700 years ago and in the 17th century. reached full bloom and perfection.

Haiku is a poem, special in form and content, with its own distinctive features. Haiku can be philosophical and religious, satirical or humorous, sad or funny, but it is always poetry, and moreover, due to its extreme brevity, haiku can be called "the quintessence of poetry." The basis of the poem is a verbally outlined detail that serves as a starting point for a chain of thoughts and emotions that recreates the whole picture. The haiku resembles the ink sketch so popular and appreciated in Japan.

It was believed among haiku poets that classical haiku presupposes the presence of renso, or association of images. The old masters of this poetic genre believed that the haiku poem should contain kigo, or "seasonal" words, providing the basis for the future detailed picture that the reader should create in his imagination. Seasonal words are words that represent the seasons: summer heat, spring or autumn wind, autumn rain. For example, bindweed-asagao ("morning face"), cicada, grasshopper symbolize summer, sakura flowers - spring, etc.

But seasonal words don't just refer to the seasons. Asagao, for example, reminds the Japanese reader of the ephemeral nature of human life, that everything in this world is transient, impermanent. The willow tree in Japanese poetry often symbolizes the sadness of separation.

The origin of haiku as a special form of versification has not been fully explored. In ancient times, the most popular form of Japanese poetry was thangka, a poem composed of 31 syllables (5-7-5-7-7). Historically, haiku emerged as an independent poetic form much later than tanka.

It is believed that haiku emerged from the tanka at the end of the Heian period (794-1191). Then, in the circles of the court aristocracy, a poetic game was widespread, the meaning of which was that tanks for given three lines, i.e. to the first part of the poem, consisting of 17 syllables (5-7-5), the missing two lines were added (the second part, which is 14 syllables - 7-7). These two parts, connected as a whole by an association of images, began to be called renga, and the first part, which consisted of 17 syllables, was called haikai no renga. The most ancient of such poems that have come down to us were written in the 13th century. T. Fujiwara, who is known as the compiler of the famous anthology "Hyakunin Isshu" ("One masterpiece from a hundred poets", c. 1235).

Perception of wildlife in japanese culture. Understanding Nature in Japanese Culture Understanding Nature in Japanese Culture