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2 Cherry blossoms, the beautiful and
the good By Spengler
Japan's yearly ritual of hanami -
cherry-blossom viewing - coincides this year with
the Western feasts of Easter and Passover. It
occurred to me that Pope Benedict XVI would
benefit from a few days of leisure beneath the
sakura in Japan. The display of blossoming
sakura is an event of note, but it is even
more fascinating to view the Japanese as they view
the cherry blossoms. Two years ago I took to task
the so-called "theological esthetics" of Hans Urs
von Balthasar, one of pope's great
influences. [1] A day in
Japan is worth a million words on this subject.
It probably is true that the Japanese have
a unique sensitivity to nature, as Professor
Masahiko Fujiwara claims. Fujiwara is the author
of a nationalist tract, The Dignity of a
State, now a best-seller in Japan. Viewing
cherry blossoms, he remarked to a Financial Times
interviewer on March 9, expresses something
essential to the Japanese character, which prefers
the fleeting sakura to
the more durable rose beloved of the English. It
is the same as hearing the music of crickets:
"When we listen to that
music we hear the sorrow of autumn because
winter is coming," he said. "The summer is gone.
Every Japanese feels that. And, at the same time,
we feel the sorrow of our life, our very temporary
short life."
Japanese culture, Fujiwara
added, makes everything into art. In that respect
Japan is unique, seeking to incorporate the
fleeting beauty of the moment into the most
commonplace features of life. Faust bet his soul
that Mephistopheles could not tempt him to try to
grasp the passing moment. The art that is Japanese
life only knows the passing moment. It is an
attempt to immortalize the moment; that is why the
Japanese are always taking pictures.
From
the Japanese viewpoint, life should be beautiful.
But it is not necessarily good, a circumstance of
which Fukiwara himself is a horrible example. His
nostalgia for bushido and samurai values
repels Japan's neighbors, who suffered unspeakably
the last time Japan turned in that direction. It
is quite possible for evil men to appreciate
beauty, and not just the beauty of nature. Adolf
Hitler loved not only Wagner, but also Beethoven,
and the great Wilhelm Furtwaengler stood under a
giant swastika to conduct Beethoven's 9th
Symphony for the Nazi leader's birthday in
1943.
It is a common observation that a
sense of the natural, or the spontaneous, uniquely
characterizes Japanese art: the unpredictable
patterns of ash glaze in ceramics, the freedom of
calligraphy, the impressionistic representation in
painting, the allusiveness of poetry. Nature is
cruel as well as generous, but always beautiful,
and this balance and tension pervades the Japanese
esthetics that Professor Fujiwara associates with
samurai ethics. If nature is as cruel as it is
spontaneous, then men also may be spontaneously
cruel.
The comparison may seem peculiar,
but the Japanese in a way resemble the Jews in
their passion to bring something of the eternal
into every detail of everyday life. As Franz
Rosenzweig put it, the myriad laws regulating
Jewish prayer, diet, marital relations, and so
forth all stem from a single motive, to import
eternity into daily life. As Fujiwara avers, that
is what the Japanese do by making every aspect of
life into a work of art. But the contrast is as
sharp as the parallel. Jewish food generally is
unappetizing as well as visually unappealing, as
opposed to Japan's magnificent national cuisine;
Jewish manners are brusque, while Japan has made
an art form of courtesy; and no aspect of Jewish
religious life is concerned with visual beauty in
any way at all.
On the contrary, Jewish
practice subordinates human instincts to revealed
commandments. Dietary laws derive from recognition
that animals also are close to God, if not as
close as humans. [2] Marital relations put the
human sex drive at the service of family and
children. Prayer places every human action -
waking, sleeping, eating, and so forth - in the
context of the presence of a personal god. One of
the most ancient Jewish teachings states that the
world rests on three things: Torah (the revealed
code of behavior), worship, and acts of kindness.
The notion that the natural world, the
world of crickets and earthquakes, of cherry
blossoms and volcanic eruptions, rests upon "acts
of kindness" presupposes a god who cares about his
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music we hear the sorrow of autumn because
winter is coming," he said. "The summer is gone.
Every Japanese feels that. And, at the same time,
we feel the sorrow of our life, our very temporary
short life." 
