1

Phenomenology of Japanese Architecture: En (edge, connection, destiny)

Michael Lazarin, Ryukoku University, Kyoto, Japan

Abstract: Japanese architecture emphasizes transitional spaces between rooms rather than the
rooms themselves. If these transitional spaces can be successfully 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 relation 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.

Key words: 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

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 describes Chōmei’s
spiritual journey through the metaphor of his dwelling places, 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 reality is
“transient” and “evanescent.”
“Transiency” is expressed by the Buddhist principles “no permanent structures” (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 it 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 attachment 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-
1
Kamo no Chōmei 1212: First sentence.
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variations. The practice of non-attachment (munen) will result 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 (Aufheben) of ordinary
experience to a transcendental consciousness of
things: an openness to the living essence of things
beyond their material manifestation.
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 move
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 because it is frequently misinterpreted as being akin to Virgil’s
“lacrymae rerum.”
Mono-no-aware was developed into an aesthetic concept by Motoori Norinaga (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 poetry, 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 intensified 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!
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2
[aware] Such is the world.” 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 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 centimeters 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 Monogatari, where one gets glimpses of
intimate moments but never a comprehensive 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 nearly 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 restaurant 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 keeping 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. Unprotected concrete begins to
disintegrate and become shabby in about fifty years. When Ando Tadao (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 (1931- ) argues that the principle 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 Kurokawa 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

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).
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.
5
Isozaki 2006: 83-85.
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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 aesthetics 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 Japan” 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 implicate not only spanning a distance but also
transcendence.
Anything that crossed, filled, or projected into the chasm of Ma (space between 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 connotations of transcendence in
the sense of leaping toward one’s destiny. Two architectural 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 moment 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.

Engawa: A Bridge to the Sky

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) Himorogi, 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 pronunciation “asobu” (game, amusement, idleness), and (9)
Michiyuki (on the way, on the move).
9
Hashi (bridge) is a homophone of hashi (chopsticks) but the Chinese characters are unrelated.
10
Isozaki 1979:13.
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“Engawa,” literally the “connecting-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, connecting 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 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 “intermediary zone” in a house; in fact, the whole house can be seen
as a series of transitional 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 scenery” (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
situated, 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 garden elements so that the engawa functions like a primitive telescopic lens.
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Consequently, the engawa is not only an “intermediary zone” from the interior 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 perception so that one is forced to make use of and
further develop one’s proprioceptive 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 arrangements 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 conducive 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 builders hung their
projects, could be expected from a philosopher who defined the very essence of human
existence as care of (Sorge) and concern for (besorgen) 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 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

11
GA 7: 150.
12
GA 20: §19.
13
GA 7: 148-151.
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(bewahren/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 beings 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 dwelling 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, Heidegger 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 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 “enduring 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 relations 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 period 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 Heidegger 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 philosophers 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

14
GA 9: 185ff.
15
GA 7: 224-226.
16
GA 9: 231-233.
17
GA 9: 231-232.
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18
scanning the brains of the philosophers to discover if anything is happening in there. 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…). Heidegger 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 as “taking-a-measure” (Vermessung). But when he speaks of dwelling, the
argument 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, “poetry (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 “maintaining 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 appropriate (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 copies. The handbook establishes standard measurements for the height, width
and depth of any architectural feature, including the distance between armchairs, 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.
Without this star-gazing, human buildings would be little more than embellishments 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 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.

18
GA 8: 45 ff.
19
GA 7: 193.
20
GA 7: 199.
21
Vitruvius: II.1.2.
 9
22
Heidegger points out that both the German word “dichten” and the Greek word
“poiein,”23 from which the English word “poetic” derives, essentially mean production as
“bringing-forth” (das Hervorbringen).24 According to the traditional Western classification of
the sciences, production (composition, 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 science that
Heidegger calls “technological thinking.” The essence of technological 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 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 spanning 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 leaping 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 (unerkennbarewiese) so long as you remain in
yourself.”25

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 produce: 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
cp. the active aspect of dwelling as “letting-lie-forth (vorliegenlassen) above.
25
Hölderlin 1963: 619.
 10
For Hölderlin, the human soul is always already a “harmonic opposition,” but if a poet
remains within the confines of subjectivity, then poetic composition is doomed to a
succession of self-defeating struggles. But when the “harmonic 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” transcendence
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 remarkable turn and distances himself from the “in-between”
itself. Poetic composition 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 schwebend). 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 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 Entsuji 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 measure 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 festivity
(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 Christian images in the pattern. In
the Summa Theologica, grace and charity (caritas) 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 poetic 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

26
Hölderlin 1963: 623.
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.”
 11
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
In the third lecture of the second semester of What is Called Thinking?, Heidegger
famously equates thinking with thanking and explains that he arrived 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
(percipio) 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 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 character occur
by crossing over a bridgeway structure called hashigakari.

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.

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.
31
GA 8: 142ff.
32
GA 8: 149.
33
GA 8: 146-47. This very loose translation of An-denken follows from Heidegger’s explanation 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 elucidation 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.
 12
If now all of us here think of the old bridge in Heidelberg, what this thinking 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 consciousness 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:
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 associated
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
35
GA 7: 159.
36
Zeami 1984c: 119.
37
Zeami 1984e: 137-40.
38
Komparu 2005: 14.
39
JAANUS
 13
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, infinitude and finitude is dialectical, but in the dramatic
tradition of Noh, the contrasts should be stark contradictions existing side by side, a
“harmonic opposition.” The shining sun does not nullify the darkness; only because there is
light can we have shadows. The shadow-world does not dim the light; the dark depths
accentuate anything that glimmers. The performance of an old man should have a trace of
former vigor; there should be 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 performance 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 harmonize 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 principal 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 traditional 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 anticipation 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 compositions 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 (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.

40
Zeami 1984d: 120. “Silla” is an old name for Korea.
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.
 14
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. Suddenly, 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 propel 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 “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 complicates 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

45
Komparu 2005: 162.
46
Nietzsche 1968: 59.
47
Hölderlin 2009: 317-18.
48
Komparu 2005: 162
49
Komparu 2005: 138-39.
 15
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 engawa 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 (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 tourist 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 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 transcendence (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 available 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 intentionally 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 accomplished actor must recover his original “purity of heart” lest he rely too

50
Vitruvius: I.2.1. Architecture consists in order (ordinatio), which the Greeks call taxis, and
arrangement (dispositione), which the Greeks called diathesin, and proportion (eurythmia ), symmetry
(symmetria), elegance (decore) and management (distributione) which the Greeks called oeconomia.
51
Matsuo Bashō 1686. This is a literal translation.
 16
52
heavily on performance elements that have succeeded in the past. 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. Philosophizing ultimately means nothing other than being a beginner.”53
As mentioned above, Hölderlin calls the experience of “divinely empowered” poetic
composition, kindness (Freundlichkeit am Herzen), and Heidegger claims that kindness is
Hölderlin’s way of saying “grace.” We know the “harmonic 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 openness 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 (Entschiedenheit), the poetic
saying, appears as the most innocent (unschuldigste).”54 In “As on a Holiday,” Hölderlin says
that the divinely empowered poetic composition 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 heartfelt 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 battlefield, 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 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 excitement 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.

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.
56
Von Fritz 1945: 223-225.
 17
Zeami says that performers need to develop riken no ken, literally the “seeing of
detached perception.”
…an actor must come to have the ability to see himself as the spectators 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 understanding .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 difficult 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 training of young
actors is to be suddenly thrown off the stage by their teachers 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 superhuman power; instead, he means that the actor must
enable his powers of proprioception 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 powers 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

57
Zeami 1984b: 81.
58
Hölderlin 1994: 421.
 18

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.
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, presence or absence. According to the
Japanese way of measuring, the span between 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 discussions 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 (Anwesenheit) 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.

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 20
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.