when I lived in Seattle , I sometimes wondered what made us Japanese so foreign. it was not just physical things-skin, eyes.food- that separated us from other Americans.(Though those were things that repelled them). It was something less visible, more essential. I never fully figured it out. Yet now that Ive returned to Japan-which, after an absence, feels, itself, slightly foreign- I think Ive identified what Americans found so annoying. Kata, A word meaning Way of doing or process a word roughly translated as form. In Japan there is a Kata for every behavior: Kangae Kata , way of thinking, yomi kata Way of reading, kaki kata, way of writing. tube kata. way of eating , Beyond that, there are sub kata for every for every discreet category: separate ways of thinking about family, work, and so forth: varied ways for reading novels, poetry, newspapers, and the like..........It is the same for hundreds and hundreds of situations:one commonly utilized, ritualized form. It is kata, I suspect, that make Americans (a people as obsessed with individuality as we(Japan) are by uniformity) see the Japanese as insufferably, in humanly same. Yet the Japanese Kata represent an illuminating philosophical principal rather than an inflexibly conduct code. In traditinonal Zen Buddhism, Kata was the means of expressing and maintaining WA- essential universal harmony. It was the mean of insuring that humility world win over arrogance: demanding that pride be subsumed by the small modest steps involved with the perfecting of any attitude or skill. Kata requirs a life life time traning, the goals of which an appreciation of the universe in each waking moment, a dedication to beauty and goodness in any endeavor, and a re- linguishing of personal vanity so that the pupil becomes one with this training. Hence the painter becomes the tool of his paintbrush:....... The StrangeNss of beauty BY LYDIA MINATOYA . ISBN 0684853620 A NOVEL. SIMON & SCHUSTER NY 1999 __._,_.___
Posted on: Tue, 28 Jan 2014 15:04:33 +0000
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