Mono no aware

The phrase joins mono (物), "things," with aware, an old cry of deep feeling, a soft "ah" from the heart. Together they describe the emotion we feel when we sense how quickly the world passes. You might feel it as cherry blossoms fall, or when you hear the last cicada of summer. You might feel it as a child grows up, or when you notice that the moment you are living in is already slipping away. This is not despair. It is a sensitive, accepting sadness, full of appreciation. It lets us love things more because they do not last, not less.

The idea runs deep in classical Japanese literature. Above all, it fills The Tale of Genji, an 11th-century novel by the court lady Murasaki Shikibu. The book has a melancholy sensitivity to passing love, beauty and time. In the 18th century, the scholar Motoori Norinaga gave this mood the name mono no aware. He called it the key to the spirit of Japanese literature. The idea grows out of mujō (無常), the Buddhist teaching of impermanence. It shows most clearly in Japan's love of the cherry blossom. People treasure the flower not in spite of its few days of bloom, but because of them. To feel mono no aware is to hold beauty and its loss in the same breath.